Haunted
by BlueKitsunebi
Summary: When his family finally moved into their new house, searching for a fresh start, Sasuke wasn't exactly thrilled to find out that one of its previous inhabitants hadn't quite left. Sasusaku AU. Rated M because of language and some themes in future chapters. May have other pairings.
1. Prologue

Something wasn't quite right about the house.

That was the one thought that circulated through his mind, and wouldn't leave him alone no matter how desperate he was to push it away. On the outside there was nothing wrong with it, of course. A simple, modest structure, not too big nor too small, and just enough bedrooms to house the whole family. It wasn't too far from the centre of town, neither old nor damaged. In fact, by the look of the clean sandstone bricks, it was quite clear that it had been build within the last thirty years or so. And yet, something about it made tiny spiders crawl across the back of Sasuke's neck.

Maybe it had been the price; unusually cheap for a suburban family house. Possibly, it could've been the way that the retailer had grinned much too wide, and shook his father's hand in a grip far too firm when his parents had signed their names on the paperwork. Or it could've just been his apprehension about starting anew, with new lives after the trouble they'd found themselves tangled up with.

A hand clapped onto his shoulder, and he turned his head to meet the gentle smile of his brother.

"We're here now, little brother. You can stop looking so traumatised."

The words seemed to strike a chord, and Sasuke glared a little, parting his lips to speak, but behind them their mother grunted, and struggled to heave a suitcase from the back of the car.

"Sasuke, Itachi, could you please come and help rather than just standing there. You're both young and strong, and your father and I are breaking our backs over here."

In his own time, Itachi sidled over to carry the suitcases out from the car, like the perfect son he was. Sasuke, on the other hand, listened without attention to their huffs of breath, and spared the house one last glance before he joined them.

* * *

Older siblings were either a good thing, or a bad thing. Like marmite, you either love them or you hate them. Sasuke couldn't quite decide whether Itachi was a thoughtful brother, or intentionally irritating.

"Get the fuck out of my room."

The words were quite simple, really.

Itachi stood, arms folded, blocking the doorway to what should've been _his_ bedroom. The expression on his face had lost some of its sympathy from before, having been replaced by a wry smile and a teasing glint in his eyes. This was perfectly innocent behaviour for an older brother. And who cares if they were probably too old to be bickering like they did. After all, what was a family without some sibling rivalry?

"Be happy Sasuke." He said, calmly. "I've taken the smaller room out of the two, so you can relax and enjoy the spaciousness of the larger one."

"The other one is a girls room." Sasuke hissed through gritted teeth.

The corners of Itachi's eyes crinkled slightly, "Who said that it was a girls room? It's just a room."

"The walls are _pink_ , Itachi. I'm not sleeping in a pink room."

"Gender stereotyping, little brother," Itachi replied, with a disappointed shake of the head, "is not a flattering trait. You'll never find a girlfriend with that kind of ignorance. Pink is merely a shade of the spectrum. At your age, I would've thought you'd have some maturity by now."

Sasuke made a move to barge past, all guns blazing, but the door was slammed in his face. Nothing but a chuckle stifled by a hand, could be heard from the other side.  
The doorframe shook when Sasuke pounded his fist once against it, before he turned and headed along the hallway to the bedroom he was forced to live in during his three years at university. Fair enough, the room was relatively spacious. There was definitely enough room to fit his games and all of his books, even if he had no bookshelf to place them. But the walls…they were a different matter entirely. Candyfloss pink, slightly faded with dust and time, chipped in places where something had been bashed against the wall. Or thrown against the wall, even. Something about them, made him feel sickly inside. Uncomfortable.

It seemed that the uneasiness he had still lingered, and if anything, it had been amplified threefold now that he was actuallyem inside/em the house. But still, there was nothing to suggest that anything was amiss. It was a standard family house, and a family just like his own had clearly lived there before they decided to move in. A family with a daughter, most likely four or five years old. That much was obvious.

The van carrying the furniture would be there soon, but it still left him plenty of time to explore. Or just keep himself away from his new bedroom. Having dumped his rucksack in the centre of the room and opened the window a crack, he stepped out into the same hallway he came through. A couple of the floorboards were a little creaky, he noticed. Unusually loose despite how new the house was.

One by one, he opened every door in the house, taking note of exactly where the bathroom was so that he didn't accidentally walk into a cupboard to take a shower. It was, well…smaller than their last house. Definitely smaller. There were only six rooms in total, and the living room and kitchen could even be considered as one, as they were merged by an arch in the wall, rather than a door.

 _It can't be helped_ , he thought with a sigh, climbing the stairs again.

But then he paused, and frowned.

The hallway was somewhat darker than it was before. It was only just past noon, so the sun still poured through the windows. But he was sure that it was darker. Particularly, around his bedroom door.

Just as he intended to, he made his way back to his room, eyeing the shadows as they deepened with every step. Along the backs of his arms, the hairs stood on end, and he was thankful for his jacket, because the air felt cooler than it did minutes ago.

"What are you doing?"

Sasuke's heart stopped. His legs froze.

For one second, he'd forgotten to breathe, until that familiar tone of voice registered in his brain. Turning his head, he recognised Itachi standing a few feet away, having just come out of his room. There was silence for a moment, until Itachi raised an eyebrow at him and chuckled. "You look like an idiot, standing in the hall like that."

Normally, Sasuke would throw a clever comeback at him. But something was different. His hairs still stood, and the cold draught that caressed his skin hadn't gone away. The mood for arguing with Itachi had passed. No fresh insults sprung to mind. Frustration no longer bubbled in his stomach. It was as if the mood between them had suddenly become heavier than ever before.

Even the atmosphere where he stood was denser. Thicker. As if the air was weighted to the bottom of his lungs, like the anchoring of a kite.

"Whatever, little brother." Itachi muttered, stepping around him, until something caught his eye. Sasuke watched, as he reached up and tapped the broken light bulb above them. "Ah, I guess this needs replacing. The bulb must've worn out."

And then Sasuke felt the stupidity sink onto his shoulders.

Of course the light bulb had just worn out. It happened all the time, to millions of people every day. Sometimes, although he hated to admit it, he knew that Itachi was right. He was such an idiot.

Behind him, his older brother slunk through the hall and down the stairs, probably on standby for when the van arrived with their furniture. He knew that his parents, especially his father, would scold him if he wasn't downstairs to help out. So with a "tsk" under his breath, he entered his room to grab a book. Kafka, The Trial. He'd been reading it on the journey and trying not to get travel sick. If he remembered correctly, it was in his rucksack, which he'd left in the middle of the room.

It took him a second and a frown to locate it, but when he did, his breath hitched in his throat.

In the corner to the left of the chimney breast, his rucksack slumped unzipped and ravaged. And splayed out all over the floor, lay his mp3, his wallet, headphones, a bottle of water, his raincoat – no longer folded neatly – and an old camera that he bought once at a car boot sale. But most interestingly, his book was spread open on the ground, and when his eyes washed over it, he realised that the corner of the page had been folded like a makeshift bookmark.

 _Itachi_ , he thought, instantly.

But then he felt the spiders again. Paranoia. Something warm and moist brushed the skin behind his ear…like a breath. The warm breath of a human. He turned on his heel, heart pounding. But there was nothing. Nothing but the curtain swaying slightly beside the open window.


	2. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

* * *

 _In her eyes, her smiles_  
 _Hide crumbling skeleton leaves_  
 _Scattered white, like snow._

* * *

The corner of Sasuke's eyebrow twitched as he gripped his phone, staring at the alarm settings. Itachi had some explaining to do. A lot of explaining. Earlier that morning, when his ears had exploded with the call of a rooster, he'd nearly crushed the phone like a cola can in his fist. But his brother wasn't a genius for nothing; The bastard had already taken off, leaving Sasuke to massage circles into his bruising ribs where he'd fallen out of bed.

Unlike Sasuke who was busy with a degree in Literature, Itachi was already involved with the local high school as part of his Post-Graduate Certificate of Education. Until they moved, his older brother had woken every day at the first sliver of dawn to allow enough driving time. Teaching Religious Studies and Philosophy had been Itachi's lifelong dream ever since he was thirteen years old. A funny sort of dream if you asked Sasuke.

Konoha University didn't start the first semester until the next Monday, and it was currently Friday much to his delight, so he had three days to his 'enjoyment'. 'Enjoyment' consisting of scouting the area to make sure he knew where he was going for his lectures, and getting used to the new house before he started his degree. Not that he wasn't ahead of the game; he'd already read half of the books on the reading list they gave him.

"Sasuke!" his mother called from downstairs, "I've made breakfast!"

One thing he couldn't deal with, was spontaneity. Some of his old friends may have referred to his habits as 'OCD', but there was no real reason why they couldn't keep a similar schedule. Sasuke never slept longer than 8:00am, and never went to bed a minute later than midnight. His mother Mikoto was well acquainted with her son's backward way of life, and knew that he'd be awake by then. After all, the clock had already struck 8:02am.

"Coming!" he yelled. He pushed himself out of bed and walked to his door, pulling up his sweatpants where they'd slid down in the night.

But when he reached the door he stopped abruptly. Something caught his eye.

Two sets of initials had been engraved into the flaking layers of white paint.

 _S.H + K.I_

Sasuke was certain that they hadn't been there the day before. He prided himself on his perceptive skills, so he would've noticed them. But they were there, just the same.  
He frowned at the crude little indentations. Obviously, they were the scratches of two people in a plastic relationship. Yet they managed to capture his attention and hold it with such masterful power, that he'd almost completely forgotten about breakfast.  
In one word, they were annoying.

He released a 'tsk' under his breath, and ordered his feet to take him to the stairs. Anywhere that he couldn't see the stupid little marks of two people's superficial love for each other. Maybe they were annoying because they were the soul cause of him keeping his mother waiting. Maybe they were annoying because it meant that along with the sugar pink walls, he'd have to paint over the doorframe too. But maybe, Sasuke thought deep down, they were annoying because they made the spiders crawl along his arms again.

* * *

Ino threw on her new leather jacket and glanced at her reflection for the hundredth time that morning. Her room in accommodation wasn't particularly big, but what could she expect? It was unitary student accommodation. But it was a new home. A new start. A new Ino. And she'd finally be released from her ties. Well, that was what she hoped for anyway.

On closer inspection of herself, she saw a splodge of cherry red lipstick on her front tooth and wiped the horrid mark away without looking herself in the eye. Since high school, red lipstick had always been considered too risky, too dangerous, and far too promiscuous, and almost out of habit her hand had itched toward her favourite sugar pink lip stain. But then she'd remembered everything, and she'd stopped, only to reach for the bright red instead, because old Ino wouldn't have worn it. And neither would've…

 _Dangerous train of thought._

She turned away from the mirror and looked at her new room, her new life. To be frank, it looked like a prison cell when she'd first walked in. But after colouring the plain white mattress with purple, orange, and magenta bed sheets, and covering the walls with posters of singers and dancers who all smiled down at her as if they were whispering to her to finally live, it felt comfortable. No longer dull and drab, but homely, and new Ino was going to love it.

Like most of the other students, she'd arrived at her accommodation a few days before she began her first year. And also like the other students, she planned to wander across the campus and discover the area. Except that she wasn't really discovering. Not when she already knew the area. She'd lived in Konoha back when she was still a child, only to move one hundred miles away once she reached seventeen. But that didn't mean that she couldn't sit and have a coffee somewhere and maybe make a friend while she was still on a roll. That, she decided, would be her goal for her first day; to make a friend.

Old Ino would've tried to land herself a potential boyfriend, but that was all in the past. It no longer mattered to her. But friends matter and she was definitely going to make one.

A smile flickered across her lips, before she strode out the door, passing the large mirror slumped lazily against the wall without a second glance.

* * *

It was a mistake to commute rather than apply for accommodation like every other student had the common sense to do.

The thought of saving himself from the abyss of debt must've clouded his judgement. It shouldn't have mattered that his family had never been closer than they had now, because when he had weighed up his decision, he didn't take into account the endless list of household chores that he would have to do.

Just because he'd young and healthy he was suddenly responsible for all the DIY, all the heavy jobs like moving furniture around, and generally everything that Itachi was apparently 'too busy' to do. So when he finished his breakfast that he'd found sitting on the counter that morning – scrambled eggs, which would've tasted better with sliced tomatoes – his mother kindly ordered him to get dressed and mow the front lawn. Out of desperation, he looked to his father sitting opposite him at the kitchen table but received nothing but a stern look, and a command to do as he was told. And that was that. Fugaku, his father always had the last word. No amount of Sasuke's infuriation would change that.

Fifteen minutes later, he found himself begrudgingly pushing a reel mower around the grass, and tried to forget the way that the elderly woman in the house across the road adjusted her glasses when she spied him through her window. But it was even harder to push away the amorous glances sent in his direction as a group of girls, looking remarkably like students, strolled along the pavement in front of his house.

"Look at that eye-candy!" One whispered excitedly. The way she sneakily pointed to him and giggled didn't escape his eyes. He grit his teeth, telling himself to deal with it.

Another with bright red hair blushed and stared at him, mumbling half to herself "He's sweating…and he's exhausted…and he's so filthy." She licked her lips, and pushed her red rimmed glasses up her nose. "…I want him" Sasuke heard her whisper, before her friends pulled her away.

Finally alone on his lawn, he shivered as a breeze ran past. The perpetual scowl on his face darkened. The place was full of odd people who looked at him funny when all he was trying to do was mow some grass.

But he forced himself to stop for a minute, because the grass was only jamming up the blades of the mower because it was too long, and he knew already that he would have only fangirls instead of friends, and the old woman was still staring at him through her living room window.

Sasuke would've thrown the damn mower down and stormed back Into the house if it wasn't for the car that drove past. Or more specifically, the person driving it. He raised his eyes when he heard the engine, only to find his gaze locked with that of a boy. The eyes were cold, Sasuke thought. Hard with a vicious undertone. And they met his with confusion at first, and then with something else. It was something he couldn't put his finger on.

However the moment only lasted a second. And the next thing Sasuke knew, the boy had driven off, his face disappearing within the fur lining of his hood.

* * *

Ino was lost. She knew the area like the back of her hand, having grown up there, and yet she'd still managed to get herself lost.

"Fuck." She uttered, cursing herself for her own stupidity, even though she was still technically on campus and she could always just ask for directions. But that would mean going back to her room, and she hadn't made a friend yet. She hadn't even managed to speak to anyone other than to apologise to a girl for almost knocking her over.

A year ago, she would've cried or flirted with the nearest boy she could find. She would've dressed up and turned up alone at a nightclub, because her friends said that they admired her confidence, and that was something that confident girls would do. New Ino could be confident too. Confident in a different way than before. And with a grin, she reminded herself of the goal she still hadn't completed.

So instead of reverting back into old Ino, she sat in one of the university cafés and waited patiently for someone to find her interesting and want to be friends with her. At every person who walked in through the door, she'd smiled. To every student who walked past the large window, she smiled. Even to the damn barista, she'd smiled with cherry lips and overlooked the way his brows knitted together because he must've thought that she was a strange one.

"Excuse me miss," he asked her when he came over. "Did you want to order something else?"

She looked at the three empty cups on her table for two, and then at the barista who wore the blankest expression known to man. He was pasty with dark eyes and dark hair, neither complimenting his complexion, and Ino instantly regretted smiling at him in the first place.

She rested her chin on her hands. "Do you have friends?"

He considered the question with a look of perplexity, "I don't think so." From his trouser pocket he pulled a little black notebook. "Is that a new drink they've come up with now? I've never heard of it..."

"It doesn't matter." She muttered, shaking her head without noticing when the cups clattered a little and favourite hair pin fell to the floor. "It doesn't matter."

Ino had stood then, left some money on the table and ran out streaming a line of curses. Behind her, the door swung to a close and customers stared at her empty table in wonder. The barista on the other hand, examined the money she'd left.

"Ahh, she gave me too much…" he mumbled quietly. But before he left, he spotted something shiny lying next to his shoe. "And she left this…" He leant down and picked up the hair pin. It was a simple design – a silver bird with a lilac rhinestone eye. Nothing particularly special. Nevertheless, he slipped it into his pocket because there was a chance that she'd come back.

* * *

As evening approached, Sasuke began to feel as though he'd never get to explore the area. His whole day had been spent painting fence panels, organising their belongings which were to go into storage, and helping his mother clean. At some point, Itachi came home and upon seeing his little brother holding a damp cloth with his head buried into the cupboard under the stairs, had offered to help. And for the first time in a long time, Sasuke was grateful toward Itachi. His gratitude was only short lasted though, as his father cut in.

"Leave them, Itachi. It's woman's work."

Sometimes Sasuke burned with hatred at how sexist his father could be, and it pleased him somewhat to see that Itachi didn't bother listening, and decided to help him anyway. He wondered what his mother had ever seen in his father.

"He never used to be this way." Mikoto said, when he asked her in the quiet of the kitchen after he finally snapped. "When we met, he was wonderful. Please don't be too harsh on him Sasuke."

Her eyes, the eyes he'd inherited, begged him to understand. All these years he had been trying to understand, but it was all in vain. His father was a tyrant, and no amount of her pleading could make him believe otherwise. The snide comments made were obviously directed toward him, insinuating that he was too feminine just because he enjoyed writing, but that didn't matter. What mattered was his mother, and how long she would last before she broke. Looking at her face, Sasuke already saw that she was too tired to fight back.

Dinner came and went in near silence. They were supposed to be close, with bonds too strong to be broken. That was what his parents had led him to believe, especially at the time being. But their silence spoke louder than words or laughter ever could, and it was too obvious; they were the most fractured family he'd ever seen. He could only ask himself, were they always fractured? Or was there a time when things were different?

His mother insisted on clearing up the dinner dishes, her reason being that "he had worked so hard" and so Sasuke headed off to his room, trying to suppress his desire to yell a river of colourful words at his father. Upon entering his room, he stopped at the doorframe when he saw the initials again. They existed. They were there. Before he saw them that morning, they didn't exist. But there they were, and they must've existed. So why couldn't he remember seeing them when they first arrived?

Sighing, he collapsed onto his bed, trying to forget all about how easily they invaded his mind. Two days. There were only two days left until he could concentrate on his degree and at least have an excuse to be away from the house. Although he was an adult and he could so easily go anywhere at any time whenever he wanted, there would be nowhere for him to go. He had no friends. No job – his father put his foot down and insisted that he spend all his free time studying. And he didn't know where to go.

A voice in the back of his head purred. _Somewhere else... Anywhere else…_

The thought was tempting. Extremely tempting. Theoretically, it would take no effort on his behalf to just pack his bags and leave. He could travel the world, visiting places and monuments that he'd only ever heard about in books. Cities that thrived with nightlife and drunken laughter, and buildings which appeared to scrape against the clouds, making him feel like a speck in comparison.

But what would his mother do?

His poor mother who was so tired, and somewhere along the way found herself stuck with an unhelpful husband and two sons who tried their best, but were both failures down to the bone. Down to the blood.

No, there was no escape from this. Not for him anyway.

He grabbed his book from the bedside table and spread himself out like a starfish on his mattress. Outside his window, magpies cawed as they stole precious food from smaller, more irrelevant birds. As a child, Sasuke liked to call the magpies the Bully Birds after he watched helplessly when three of them flew off carrying a live baby crow. It was natural selection, the way the world worked, and Sasuke chewed the inside of his lip because he hated it. He hated the idea of predator and prey. The tiny birds with tiny beaks were his favourites. Their delicate birdy legs looked to him like the very twigs they perched on, and because of that, he felt that they were closer to nature than the Bully Birds.

Two pages, three pages he read of Kafka, until a knock at his door brought him down to reality.

He didn't answer, but Itachi entered anyway and leant against the foot of his of the corner of his eye, Sasuke noticed that his brother's hands were wet, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows.

Sasuke retained his hold on the book – deliberately concealing his face – even though he knew that behind the creamy pages, Itachi was watching him with his lips hinting at a smile.

"What do you want?" Sasuke broke the tension.

"Just checking up on my little brother."

The amusement in Itachi's voice irked him. "I'm fine," he bit through his clenched jaw.

"Are you?"

The question sounded nearly rhetorical, and Sasuke's breaths faltered. How could he possibly answer that? Was he actually okay, or was it all just empty words? Words that he'd gotten so used to repeating on autopilot day after day, until he didn't recognise the voice that was saying them.

Itachi raised an eyebrow. "You've been acting odd ever since we came here." He began to pick at the cheap wood of Sasuke's bed frame. "You look scared shitless half the time."

"Itachi." Sasuke growled, his voice low and dangerous but exhausted all the same. "I already told you that I'm fine. And I know that you're only asking because _she_ asked you to."

His older brother stopped picking at the bed, and Sasuke was sure that he felt him stiffen. "It's not polite to refer to one's parent with the third person personal pronoun 'she'."

He groaned and tightened his grip on his book without thinking that it would bend the pages. "I'm trying to read. Either say something meaningful or get out."

Sasuke heard a creak as his older brother made his way to the door, muttering "Whatever you say, Sasuke."

Three hours later, his book lay on the floorboards by his bed after slipping through his fingers at the first sign of sleep. The pages continually flipped over and grooved at the edges, as if they were being turned by a translucent hand.


	3. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

* * *

 _Pale fingers, cold toes._  
 _Frozen in time, she weeps. Mourns._  
 _Spring is long since dead._

* * *

He couldn't believe it. It was completely impossible. He blinked once, twice, three times. But there it was, still sat there staring at him as if it had every right to be there, in his house, in his room, in his book.

 _'Please stop unfolding the page corners. It means I have to find my place again, but if you insist, then at least have the decency buy me a bookmark.'_

Itachi? No. It couldn't have been him. Itachi wasn't the type of person who would sneak into his brother's room at night just to read a book that he quite fancied. Hell, Itachi would just take the book without asking. So who, or _what_ had the audacity to write in his book?

And then there was that word…

'Please…'

' _Please_ …'

It was written as if whoever had been rooting through his stuff actually had manners, as if he was the one in the wrong. The last line, when he had first laid eyes upon it, had left him fuming.

 _'If you insist, then at least have the decency to buy me a bookmark.'_

He sneered at the words, dismissing them as if they were crushed empty cans floating around the streets. But he would never admit that he was completely, utterly perplexed and baffled by the forwardness of the request. No, it was not a request; it was a subtle demand. For a bookmark of all things. ' _I'm not a public library'_ he wanted to write back, but the words had gotten themselves lost somewhere in his mind. _It's too early in the morning for something like this_ , he thought, shaking his head and sitting up.

With a groan, he rubbed the crusting sleep from his eyes and ran a hand through his hair, ruffled and disturbed from bed. Outside, his parents car had disappeared from the drive, and the neighbours – including the strange old woman from across the street – were beginning to throw open their curtains, if they weren't already.

His lips twitched. Itachi was quite the prankster. Or just a typically annoying older brother.

* * *

Naruto practically bounced on the balls of his feet as he banged several times on his new neighbour's door. This was it. He was going to find friends, close friends, enjoy what was left of his adolescence whilst getting a real education, and then when he landed himself a well-paying job, he would be unstoppable. The world hadn't exactly favoured him in the past, but everything had changed. He could finally look forward and make the most of it. For the first time, he could _live._

There were some scuffles and a muffled grunt, until the door cracked open to reveal a sleepy looking boy with lazy eyes and what appeared to be a brown pineapple resting on his head.

 _No Naruto_ , he thought on second glance, _that's his hair_.

"Huh?" The pineapple boy yawned, as he took in Naruto's toothy grin and his third-hand sneakers – scuffed, painted with mud, and falling apart at the soles. "What do you want?"

Naruto scratched the back of his knotted blonde hair. "Heh…Naruto Uzumaki! Nice to meet ya!"

Pineapple blinked, his face blank, until he frowned slightly. "Shikamaru. And what the fuck are you doing at my door at eight in the morning on a Saturday?"

"I kinda wanted to meet my new neighbours, since ya know, we're all gonna have to get along somehow."

Naruto shivered under his brand new t-shirt that Jiraiya had bought him months back. He'd insisted on celebrating Naruto's acceptance into Konoha University after two years of hard work, and with a clap on the boy's shoulder, had said to pick any item of clothing he liked. The gesture had meant so much, that Naruto saved it for when he started his new, improved life at University.

Pineapple – now named Shikamaru – scowled, and Naruto braced himself for disappointment. But then the scowl broke into a tired smile, and Shikamaru opened his door fully for the other boy to step in.

"Troublesome" Naruto heard him mutter under his breath. But that didn't matter, because the word had been spoken with more amusement than hatred. And _that_ was the most relieving thing that he had heard in years.

* * *

 _'Sasuke Dear, I was wondering if you could find it in you to help your poor mother, and find a space for this box in the attic whilst me and your father are busy at work. Thank you for being Mama's Sugar Pie, lots of love, your mother.'_

Sasuke's eyes shifted from the sparkly purple writing on floral memo paper, to the cardboard box on the kitchen worktop. Scrawled on the side in black marker pen, it was labelled as 'Christmas Decorations'.

He really didn't want to have to do it. Every inch of him protested against the idea of bringing out the ladder and shuffling around in the attic, with its dust and its dead bluebottles. But the box simply stared at him, waiting. An image of his mother's dark eyes – his own eyes – hardening into steel, flashed in the back of his mind for no longer than a second, and he shuddered.

No. He had no choice. As much as he loved his mother, the woman was terrifying when she wanted to be, and like most Uchiha women, she had a nasty alter-ego. And sometimes, whenever he had done something that had upset her, he would find carefully placed long black hairs in his dinner. Hairs much too long to belong to him, his brother, or his father. Hairs that would never appear in anyone else's roast potatoes.

So within ten minutes time, he found himself on a ladder peering into the attic. Except that he couldn't see a thing beyond where the light from below brushed the silhouettes of old lamps and boxes. Boxes. Boxes everywhere. Whichever direction he turned his head, more black squares appeared. Were all these boxes from his family? It was quite probable, but Sasuke didn't remember them bringing quite that many when they arrived.

He took a breath, but his chest heaved and spluttered, his lungs rejecting the air, thick with grey dust. As his eyes adjusted to the blackness, he saw the dust swirling, falling from the roof like ash as if he'd stepped into the scene of a natural disaster. An unusual smell crept up into his nose; Damp, mould and a tinge of something indescribable. Something like the smell of a human. But it was gone as quickly as he had sensed it, and instead he gagged on the rotten smell. Sasuke decided, after wiping the saliva from his lips, that from then on he would breathe through his mouth. If he tried hard enough, he could pretend not to feel the strain of the ash on his lungs.

He stepped up and drenched himself in the darkness, feet padding carefully as the floorboards creaked under his weight. His arms ached a little from the weight of the small box. He could only wonder what kind of Christmas decorations would weigh as much as a baby hippopotamus. However, the thought was dismissed when the hairs on the back of his neck rose. He peeled his eyes, searching for space to dump the stupid box and go, and maybe even brush away the little twinges of panic he felt in short orange bursts.

It was getting difficult to ignore the burn of invisible eyes on his back.

* * *

Ino leant her entire body weight against the door of her student accommodation building, in hopes of trying to shift it open. After her second unsuccessful day of being new Ino, she'd considered giving herself a much needed makeover and hitting one of the inner-city clubs. But then memories of a certain person had melted the smile on her pretty face, like old grey snow. So she opted for the next best thing; a shopping spree. She'd grabbed her black and red polka dot wallet, thrown it into her handbag and hit the high street.

What she hadn't taken into account though, was the fact that she'd left her car – a birthday present from her father – back at home, one hundred miles south from Konoha University, and that she'd have to haul her winnings back to her dorm. But the door was fucking heavy, and she couldn't open the damn thing with no hands. It was difficult enough punching in the security code, but the door itself was something out of a nightmare.

 _What the hell is this thing made of?_ Ino thought, pressing her shoulder into it and pushing as hard as she could. _Reinforced steel and bulletproof glass?_

"You look like you could use a hand with that door."

She jumped out of her skin and turned, finding herself face to face with a scrawny looking boy, who beamed at her with eyes bluer than her own. With one hand, he scratched his mop of blonde hair which was in dire need of a good brush. Or a good yank, since it stuck up in tufts like it was trying to get as far away as possible from his scalp. Beside him, another boy stood with his hands in his jacket pockets, watching her with clear disregard. _Tsk...How rude._

"I'm fine…really." She said to the blonde boy, assuming that he was the one who spoke since he was the only one smiling at her.

"Che. Clearly you're not." The rude one muttered, intentionally loud enough for her to hear.

Ino's eyes narrowed. She examined him piece by piece, from his ridiculous ponytail and his pierced ears, to the way his body slouched as if simply standing was too exhausting of a task. She tossed her fringe from her eyes and looked back to the blonde with a smile.

"Don't mind me. I'll be out of you way in just a second."

With more force than ever before, she continued to throw her side against the door, determined to prove the rude ponytail boy wrong. She was fine. She wouldn't bother these people. Old Ino would've given in easily, and even plastered on a flirty smile and some suggestive comments, but not now. Not now. Three tries, and the door finally caved, slowly opening under her weight. _There!_

Her lips curved into a devious grin. Filled with the confidence of new Ino, she twisted on her heel and threw a winning grin to the ponytail guy.

Except that he wasn't there anymore.

Someone cleared their throat behind her. Even though she knew who it was, and even though she really didn't want to, she forced herself to peer over her slender shoulder.

There he stood, close enough that she could feel his breath against the skin of her ear. His lips tilted upwards at one corner and his eyes amusedly stared into hers, as he held the door open with one hand.

"I could've done that myself!"

He snorted. "Yeah, I'm sure. That's exactly why you've been so successful so far."

Ino's comeback froze on her tongue. She glowered, hating the way that he had raised one eyebrow at her antics. She hated his stupid hairstyle, his poor dress sense, and his cool attitude as if trying to earn a degree was nothing but child's play to him. She hated the way that he smelled like cheap fabric conditioner, men's shampoo and sweat, rather than chemicals and sickly perfumes. But most of all she hated the way that his eyes – a dark, dark brown – searched hers with the smallest flicker of something close to kindness. But he couldn't be kind. She didn't want him to be, because he was rude to her, and because she hated every part of him; Ino didn't like playing the villain.

"Hey! Let's be friends here, okay?"

Ino snapped out of her angered trance to see the blonde boy holding up both of his hands in surrender. His eyes darted to and fro between herself and the rude ponytail guy. She said nothing, but watched as the blonde smiled like the sun in an attempt to diffuse the tension.

"Here, tell us what floor you're on and we'll help you carry those bags."

"How do I know you're not just a pair of creepy guys who want to know where I'm staying?" She hissed, narrowing her eyes.

The blonde's smile flickered like a candle on the verge of blowing out. But he patched it up again before it became too obvious. His efforts were in vain; she noticed it anyway. "I just want to make friends, ya know? I don't know anyone here except Shikamaru, and I only met the guy this morning."

Ino's expression softened. _Me too_ , she thought, _I want some too_ … The words slipped past her lips before she could stop them, "fourth floor, room B."

Behind her, the ponytail guy's expression changed. Whether it brightened or darkened, she couldn't understand. He was a book that couldn't be translated.

However, the blonde's eyes scrunched up in delight and his smile grew so wide that Ino was afraid of his ears disappearing.

"Woop! You're on the same floor as us! What's your name? I'm Naruto Uzumaki, the one and only!"

"Ino Yamanaka." She answered, wondering whether her unsuccessful day was more of a blessing than she'd previously realised. "And I'm going to take a leap and assume that _that_ " she turned her head around to nod at the ponytail guy "is Shikamaru."

He rolled his eyes, fingers twitching toward a pack of cigarettes peeking out of one of the pockets in his baggy jeans. "Shikamaru Nara."

 _Cigarettes…What a disgusting habit_. She scoffed, before sliding into the entrance hall of the building. She hated him and his cigarettes with their pungent, clingy smell. She hated every part of him. But when Naruto insisted that he help carry some of her bags, and he muttered "troublesome woman…" under his breath, Ino kind of liked the way that his eyes betrayed his words.

* * *

Sasuke lay sprawled out on his bed. A strand of his hair had fallen into his eye and managed to tangle itself in his eyelashes. It stung his eye, blocking his vision and triggering his reflexes. But he didn't bother to remove it. The effort of simply raising a hand…no, a finger, to brush it away was too strenuous on his muscles. When did he become so tired? He couldn't answer.

The sound of a dog yapping outside, mingled with the sharp smashes and yells coming from downstairs. She was probably throwing plates again, like the last time they had an argument this big. Sasuke had always thought that it was a habit of hers, more than anything, but now he wasn't sure; it was probably because she had nothing else to throw. They'd sold most of their valuables trying to start a new life. The corner of his lips twitched in irony. _How successful we've been so far…_

Suddenly, something crashed into his window with a bang and he sat up, his reverie broken. His limbs throbbed with adrenaline from the shock, and he turned toward the window, finding nothing splattered against it. He'd half been expecting blood from a dead bird, or the remnants of an egg. The window wasn't smashed or cracked, but he slipped off the bed and went to inspect the damage anyway. Gazing out of the window, he was surprised to see nothing. Not a person or a footprint, nor any scrap of human life at all.

 _What the actual fuck?_ He thought, a frown marring his face. _There isn't even a dead bird…_

The shouts and insults still emanated from the kitchen, and Itachi had yet to emerge from his room. They hadn't heard it, Sasuke realised with disbelief. The noise had certainly been loud enough to echo past the floorboards and through the walls, so there was no way that his family hadn't heard even a fraction of it. He waited one minute, two minutes, three minutes, yet nobody came to investigate.

He stepped away from the window, suspicious but willing to pass it off as nothing, only for his steps to waver. His eyes widened, and the patter of thin spider legs crawled along the palm of his left hand. There on his pillow, as if it had been there all along, sat a spiral bound notebook.

A strained chuckle forced its way out of his throat, as he stared in both astonishment and terror at the vibrant purple cover. That wasn't his notebook. It was _not_ his notebook. It most certainly wasn't Itachi's – and his brother would dropkick him for even so much as insinuating the idea that he would possess something so gaudy. And it couldn't possibly have been his mother's; she hated the colour purple with a passion.

But what horrified Sasuke the most, was the fact that it hadn't been there before. He had been lying with his head in that exact spot, and he was pretty sure that he didn't have anything tucked under his pillow. Where did it come from? Where _could_ it have come from?

 _Nowhere..._

* * *

She crouched in her corner, staring at him with desperation. She'd seen the look on his face when he first spotted the notebook. It was the same look that everyone had when she tried to reach out to them. The same horror, the same repulsion. Every time a new family moved in, she had watched as they ran through the door and out of sight. A year later, she had yet to see any of them come back. Mother was right; the world is full of monsters, and she was one of them.

"Please" she whispered. Her voice was whipped away, as if it were nothing more than a silvery thread in a blizzard "please take it."

Of course, he couldn't hear her. Not unless he wanted to. But when he had first entered the house, with his typical messed up family, she couldn't take her eyes off him. He was a broken rag-doll. She'd had a rag doll many years ago, and although she couldn't remember exactly what it looked like, she could recognise one anywhere. This boy was just like her rag doll – torn apart so many times that the stitches began to resemble scars. They were all over him like ivy. Ugly white scars, twisting and wrapping all over the planes his body.

 _Beautiful scars all over his body…_

She had never seen another rag-doll since hers had disappeared somewhere, and so when she first laid eyes on him and his thin, ribbon stitches, she realised that she wanted him to stay.

"Please" she tried once more, as he took a hesitant step forward. Not toward the door, but to the bed, to his pillow, to her notebook. "Please."

 _Let's be rag-dolls together…_

* * *

The skin on his arms prickled, as his feet inched toward the bed. He didn't know what he was doing. Surely logic would tell him to get the hell out of his bedroom, and he almost did. But he heard it and stopped.

That small voice...No, not a voice. It was thin and wispy in the air, thin and translucent like a spiders thread. A spider's thread that almost resembled a word. Almost.

He was certain that he had completely lost his mind, as his shins hit the cheap wooden edge of his bed frame with a small creak, which seemed so loud in the silence of his bedroom. When did it become so silent? But it wasn't silent, because that thin thread had appeared again. A pearly spectre that was not at all ominous, but beautiful in an unearthly way. And he was drawn to it in the same way that a marionette is forever tied to its puppeteer.

 _You've lost youself, Sasuke_ , a voice in his head whispered, _You've lost your mind._

He reached toward the purple notebook, and holding his breath, he flipped the cover over. A shiver ran across his shoulders under his t-shirt, as words bled into the blank page.

...

 **Hello, Sasuke.**


	4. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

Thank you Far2addicted for beta-reading this!

* * *

 _And the branches shook_  
 _in a blizzard of blossoms,_  
 _"Save me" she whispered._

* * *

 **Hello, Sasuke.**

Every inch of Sasuke's body froze. Ice cold hands were pressed against his skin, leaving goosebumps in their path, and neither shunning nor welcoming him. The words lay black and crisp against the page, the very page that was definitely blank when he'd turned the cover.

And his name. How could it have just _appeared_? The words had just materialised…Hell, he'd watched with his own two eyes as they had manifested out of thin air. But that was impossible, wasn't it? It was at this point that Sasuke realised that whatever was happening was not Itachi's doing. No, this was something far beyond the capabilities of his older brother.

 _Get the hell out of here!_ A voice – his voice – screamed in the back of his head, but he ignored it. Maybe it was because he was a stubborn bastard, or because he was an idiot for engaging with something beyond the realm of his imagination, or because he couldn't feel his legs or feet anymore, but he still ignored it.

Instead, he picked up on the ballpoint pen that he kept on his bedside table for when he was closely analysing his books and gripped it in his fist, his hand shaking. And because he was stupider than he gave himself credit for, he did the only thing he could think of doing. He replied.

 ** _Who are you?! What are you?!_**

There was nothing for a few seconds, a nothingness that swallowed Sasuke whole. All at once, the paper beneath his writing began to turn black, and he released a deep breath.

 **Who am I? Is that really important anymore?**

The tips of his knuckles whitened around the pen as he wrote again with far too much pressure.

 ** _You've practically insisted on communicating with me these past few days. I knew something was off about this house. So yes, it's really fucking important!_**

There was a pause, and when the words appeared, his throat tightened and bile pooled into his mouth.

 **I'm Sakura, and I'm dead.**

* * *

Hinata ran her fingernails along the bookshop wall, feeling the lumpy grooves of bricks smothered in paint. Her steps were slow and careful as she waved her stick back and forth through the air in front of her, feeling for the legs of tables or people.

There was a clatter from behind her as a book fell to the floor, and her body jumped at the noise, but quickly relaxed. She needn't worry, because she knew wholeheartedly that Neji wouldn't let anything happen to her. The last time something had happened to her, he had wordlessly blamed himself for not being there for her. A gentle smile graced her lips as she thought back to the memory with fondness. All she had done was trip over an uneven ridge in the pavement on her way home, and according to Hanabi, Neji had refused to meet her blank gaze for a whole week. Now, his presence hovered over her back like a shadow.

"Hinata, do you have your list?" He asked, steering her away from the edge of a bookshelf.

She stopped and reached into the pocket of her woolly jumper, pulling out a crumpled piece of paper which she handed to him. There was a silence while he looked over the list, which her roommate had gladly scribbled down for her. Then he released a heavy sigh. "I'm not sure that they'll have all of these, but we can look anyway."

She lowered her head and shrunk back, as if she wanted to hide from him. Yet, despite the inconvenience for him, and the responsibility he had – _The burden_ , she thought – she still felt his fingers lightly grasp her elbow as he pulled her down passageways that she couldn't see.

"The audiotapes are over here."

"T-Thank you, Neji," She whispered.

* * *

His smile was fake.

Naruto wasn't too used to seeing smiles, because not many people had shared one with him in the past, but he'd spent many years observing the smiles of others, so he knew how to spot a real smile from a mile off.

Maybe it was the way that the boy's muscles forced themselves to contract, or the way his eyes didn't crinkle at the edges quite as much as they should, but Naruto knew it immediately. The way that this boy was smiling at him was fake fake fake.

"I believe you've dropped your pen," he said, holding out the worn piece of stationary to Naruto, who stared at the boy. "You're going to a welcome lecture, aren't you?" he added, and Naruto could only wonder how he'd figured that out.

"Thanks…" Naruto took the pen from the boy's palm, and flashed his usual grin at him. A real smile. He made sure of that. "And yeah, I'm going to a welcome lecture. How'd ya know?"

The fake smile widened, like one of a creepy doll. "I'm going to one too, but mine's for fine arts. Also, it's still fresher's week, so you have no need for that bag otherwise." He nodded curtly toward Naruto's messenger bag, which he'd bought three years ago from a charity shop with money that people had thrown at him when he was on the streets. Naruto realised now that he should've asked Jiraiya for some change to replace it. The holes and tears in the navy green fabric were fraying and growing wider with time.

"Not to mention," the other boy continued, and Naruto's head snapped up again, only to find that the fake smile had vanished, and left behind was the most vacant expression he'd ever laid eyes upon. "You look like you have no idea where you're going."

Naruto frowned at his comment. In the corridor around them, students bustled by and paid no attention to the two.

The boy pointed over his left shoulder to a large scale map of the campus, which stood high on a wall display. "You do realise that there's a map over there?" he asked haughtily. "Or can't you read it?"

Naruto's jaw slackened. This boy was unbelievable. _Unbelievable_. Was he even human?

"Oi!" he snapped. "I can read pretty damn good, alright?!"

The boy looked taken aback for a moment. "Really? What else can you do?"

"I'm Naruto Uzumaki! I can do anything I want!" Naruto yelled, earning himself a few curious glances from other students passing by.

Slowly, the fake smile made its way back again. "Not anything. There is one thing I can think of that you can't do, Dickless."

Naruto's nostrils flared, and his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at his sides. "Hey! I have one, alright?! And I'm sure as hell that mine is way bigger than yours!"

There was silence for a second, broken by nothing but Naruto's heavy breathing, and then he heard a cough followed by a small tap against his leg. He turned, knowing subconsciously that he wasn't going to like what he would see, and faced the rest of the corridor.

It was empty. The students from before had cleared out, leaving nothing behind but a stupid map and a tiny girl who stood, looking perplexed, right behind him. He said nothing, but took in her long, dark hair and her pale, lilac eyes that looked right at him, yet far beyond him.

"I'm s-sorry," She squeaked, then hurried past him, waving a white stick in the air before her legs.

He stared fixatedly at her retreating back, paying no heed to the boy who turned and said. "Bye, Dickless!"

Naruto had made a complete fool out of himself already, and he was only a few days into his new life. When the girl rounded the corner, he snapped out of his trance and ran a hand through his hair in despair.

* * *

"Sasuke."

He inhaled deeply, his rib-cage arching off the floor. Something hummed in his ears, like the buzz of an insect in summer, but the sound stretched on and on until it curved through the spaces in his head, quickly growing less like a hum and more like a dull throb.

"Sasuke."

The sound started pounding, almost like the pound pound pound of his heart. He exhaled from the bottom of his lungs, and all at once, something lifted from his chest.

"Sasuke!"

He jolted awake, snorting when he lifted his head too quickly and bashed it against the drawer of his bedside table.

"How graceful of you, little brother."

The oh-so-familiar ironic twang of Itachi's voice filled Sasuke's ears. Blinking twice in an attempt to force his eyes to focus, he raised a hand to pat the tender skin on his forehead. It took him a second to realise that he was lying in a crumpled heap on the floor of his room, and then another second to register the words left unanswered in the air. Turning his head to the right, his gaze met with his older brother's. Itachi stared down at him, eyes crinkled at the corners and lips curled in amusement, and it was only the slight twitch of his eyebrow that revealed the true depth of his concern as he crouched, knees bent uncomfortably, beside Sasuke's body.

"You always were the epitome of elegance," he added. His eyes didn't miss the muscles of Sasuke's jaw growing taught as the seconds passed. "Care to tell me your secret?"

"Shut up!" Sasuke growled, furiously rubbing his forehead with his fingertips.

"Will you at least explain to me what you're doing on the floor?"

"I don't know, do I?" He thought hard for a moment until a voice drifted through his mind.

 _Ah, but you do know, don't you?_

A certain purple notebook flashed through his mind's eye, and suddenly, everything fell into place.

Itachi's hand reached out to check Sasuke's temperature, only to be slapped away. The boy hissed dangerously, "Don't touch me!"

"That's no way to speak to your brother, Sasuke." The answer was spoken softly, kindly. When Sasuke glanced up, he found that all traces of amusement had vanished from Itachi's eyes, and instead of curling, his lips were set in a line.

"Just stop it… Stop trying to make it up to me by being my brother…" He hissed under his breath, and ran a hand through his greasy hair. "Stop pretending to care."

Itachi stood and looked at the door. "I have a right to care, Sasuke," he said. "I come home after a long, hard day with the expectation of having a normal evening, only to find my baby brother collapsed and unconscious on the ground. Yes, believe it or not, I care."

With that, he exited the room, each individual step precise and careful, leaving Sasuke staring at his back. After everything, how could he believe a word that Itachi said? How could anyone believe anything he said? Whether he was trying to make it up to his little brother or not, Sasuke couldn't tell, but he had decided long ago that he would never fall for one of Itachi's lies as long as he lived, and he wasn't about to start now.

Leaning his weight onto his elbows, and ignoring the burn of skin against wood, Sasuke shook thoughts of his older brother out of his head. He couldn't concern himself with Itachi at that moment; there were more pressing issues to deal with.

 _Like the notebook…_

He knew, as soon as the memories came flooding back to him, that he had fainted at the sight of the words written by the 'Sakura' person.

 _The dead person._

"Sakura…" he breathed, not entirely sure whether to place any faith in his own memories. The thought of communicating with a resident of the realm of the deceased through a spiral-bound notebook seemed absurd, inside and out. If a stranger had told him a year ago that he would one day move into a new house, only to be haunted by a dead girl who had lived and died in his bedroom, they would've found themselves caked in blood, a carcass at the side of the road.

The mattress creaked as he hauled his torso off the floor, and groped his fingers around the pillow.

Nothing.

Sasuke shot up, the shock waking him from his earlier stupor, and stood by the bedside. One by one, each of his pillows were thrown halfway across the room as he turned his bed upside down. Cursing quietly, he yanked the pillows from their cases, then pulled the duvet out of its linen. His chest heaved with effort, and without hesitation, he crossed the room and tossed the contents of his wardrobe out to join the pile accumulating at his feet.

By the end of his rampage, he stood calf deep in clothes and bedding, straining for breath, and missing a certain purple notebook.

* * *

Ino ran her finger along the edge of a bookshelf, following the little black numbers printed on scraps of paper that were taped to the spines of the books. She ignored the build up of dust that ruined her manicure – Old Ino would've been bothered by such things. New Ino, not so much – and glanced over the lengthy number written on her hand.

She'd only ever known one person who understood the Dewey Decimal system inside and out, who could locate the book she wanted within two minutes, who could read a whole textbook in a day. But that person was gone.

"She would've found this so easily," Ino whispered, so quietly that nobody heard her except for a boy on the other side of the shelf who shuffled away, eyeing her warily.

 _Ah, here it is!_

She grinned, prying a copy of 'French: The Full Guide to Grammar' from between two thinner books, and cradled it to her chest. Holding it there, she looked over the front cover, affirming with herself that she hadn't made a mistake.

 _There!_ She thought, filling her head with memories of a particular person. _She would've been so proud of me!_

"Oi, Ino."

She twirled on her heel, only to fly straight into the bookcase. Her upper arm collided into the hard edge of the shelf she had been looking at only a minute ago, and she gasped in pain, the skin burning where it had been struck. Her feet tottered forward in a haphazard jumble of steps as her body swayed. A large hand shot out and grasped her shoulder firmly, steadying her. There was a rattle of the shelf, and then silence.

"Urgh," she groaned, clasping a palm to the searing red mark on her arm. When she blinked and peered around, she noted the glares shot her way through the gaps between shelves, and she shrunk back, wishing deeply that she could curl up in a corner somewhere and die of embarrassment.

Turning her head to whomever had grabbed her arm, she said, "Thank y-"

The words froze on her lips.

Before her stood Shikamaru, looking perpetually bored, as always. His eyes, piercing and analytical, bore into hers with the same disinterest they'd held when they'd first met. She couldn't remember when he'd removed his hand from her shoulder, but both of them were now shoved into his pockets as if he had no business, as a student, being in a library. She hadn't known him for long, of course, but she knew already that he was the smartest person she'd ever come to know. _Hmph_ , she thought. _Bastard probably thinks he's too good for textbooks_. But when she searched his eyes closely, behind the tiny fleck of green in the corner of his right eye, she saw how a series of cogs were constantly turning in his mind, constantly processing and anaylzing everything around him. _On second thought, he probably doesn't actually need textbooks_. A sliver of her sizzled in frustration; she couldn't stand people who were perfect without even needing to try. But another, larger slice of her heart burned with something beyond admiration. This boy; was he a genius?

For a moment, she _thought_ that maybe new Ino could try and be a genius too.

"You just going to stand there staring into my eyes, or are you going to say 'hello'?" His voice, for the second time that day, snapped her out of her reverie. "Troublesome girl…" he muttered.

And just like that, the admiration was gone.

Ino huffed. "What do you want? You have no right to speak to me after you dropped my new dress down the stairs yesterday. You do realise how many filthy shoes have been trailing muck all over those stairs, don't you?"

Shikamaru rolled his eyes. "I apologised."

"Only after I _made_ you apologise." She tapped her foot impatiently. "And you didn't even say it like you meant it."

"Just put it on a boil wash, it'll be fine."

Something white hot and scalding snapped inside her. What did he just say? She couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe the absolute nerve of this guy. Who the hell did he think he was? Her jaw clenched tight as the words were spat through her teeth, "You can't put silk on a _boil wash_ , you arrogant pineapple!"

Over his shoulder, she briefly noted that the librarian had slunk over and poked her head around a shelf. She was an older woman with wiry greying hair and eyes like slathers of ice, and she held a finger to her lips when she gave Ino a glare of warning, but Ino didn't care. This was something that old Ino would've gotten mad about, but control and dignity could be held on pause for the time being. She had something much more pressing to deal with.

Shikamaru, upon hearing her words, just raised an eyebrow. "Arrogant pineapple...Has anyone ever told you that your imagination is top-notch?"

Her fingers flexed before clenching together hard enough to make her nails dig painful waxing moons into her palms, but before she could make a scene, her eyes caught those of an onlooker staring at her between shelves, and she turned to stomp away.

"Ino."

Her steps faltered and she gazed at him over her shoulder.

"There's a party in our building tonight." His expression turned sour as he mulled over the situation. "Naruto wants to go. He wants to meet more people, which means that he's going to drag me along too."

When he didn't continue, she gritted her teeth and seethed, "How does that have anything to do with me?"

Shrugging, Shikamaru scratched the side of his nose. "You seem desperate for friends, so I was thinking that you should come along and make some."

Her anger fizzled like a sherbet lemon until it had dissolved into nothing. How could he have possibly known that? She could only stare at him in wonder and fright, even if his knowing smile pissed her off to the extreme, and even if her knees ached to kick him in the crotch. But she couldn't, because he had _known_. The only question on her mind, was how?

But gawking wasn't something that New Ino would do, so she shook away her curiosity and flashed him the dazzling, white smile that she'd practiced in the mirror just that morning.

"I'd love to."

* * *

He needed alcohol. In the same way that his mother often craved chocolate to rid herself of stress, Sasuke decided that he wanted to banish all thoughts of the spiders, the notebook and this 'Sakura' person. But in order to do so, he'd need to get drunk, so drunk that he wouldn't be able to wake up in time for his welcome lecture the next morning.

Pulling on a heavy jacket, Sasuke huffed a little when his hands caught on the fabric where the sleeve had turned inside out. His hair didn't look quite so dirty when he raked his fingers through it, but it didn't matter too much; who cares about hair when you're intoxicated? His footsteps echoed against the stairs, sending arrhythmic thuds through the house, and he felt each thud reverberate through his body, and beat against his heart.

"Those stairs are old, Sasuke. There's no need for unnecessary force."

Sasuke turned to see Itachi watching him from the dull green couch in the living room, a cigarette sandwiched between the fingers of one hand, and a red pen in the other. On the coffee table, heaps of file paper – essays, by the looks of it – lay in stacks all across the veneer table that they'd bought from a charity shop before they moved.

Itachi took a drag from his cigarette and added, "I see you've recovered."

"I need to borrow your car."

"Why?"

"Thought I'd take a road trip," he answered, but Itachi's face remained placid as he waited for his baby brother to give him a proper answer. "Why do you think?" Sasuke sneered.

"Enlighten me?"

"I'm going to campus. I want to see if there are any events on and you know, socialise."

For a second, Sasuke thought he saw Itachi's eyes narrow, but the moment passed and Itachi sighed before searching his pockets. He threw a car key across the room, which Sasuke caught with one hand, twirling it between his fingers. As he headed out of the door, out of the house, he heard Itachi's voice swirling out from behind him.

"Don't get too drunk, little brother."

But that didn't matter anymore. Nothing really mattered in this world. Sasuke climbed into the driver's seat and slid the key in, turning it to start the engine. Everything that plagued his mind, his father's disrespect for his mother, his brother's fake attempts to make up for past trauma, spiders crawling on his skin, stupid purple notebooks and that 'Sakura' _thing_. None of it mattered. The sun would explode in supernova, and the Milky Way would collide with other galaxies, and the human race would become none-existent. The only evidence for their existence would be the fragments of light bulbs, plastic bottles and mobile phones, the hairs of spider's legs floating through space and purple notebooks crushed into oblivion.

Everything was trivial.

And that's exactly why Sasuke was determined to forget all about it.

So he drove three miles into the city to Konoha University, earning himself a series of beeps and middle fingers along the way. He'd had barely any practice driving after he'd passed his test because he didn't have a car. Cars were trivial. They, to, would be destroyed when the sun exploded like a flower blooming with elements. He drove Itachi's car onto the pavement, leaving it there, and made his way down to the campus where students were still wandering around, looking for takeaways and clubs. Takeaways and nightclubs; they were all trivial too.

"Sasuke?"

The sound of his name in such a familiar voice numbed sasuke to his core. He twisted his head, looking for the source, and then their eyes locked. The weedy boy with blonde hair and blue eyes stared at him, transfixed, and all at once, he was ten years old again.

"Naruto."

Maybe some things weren't so trivial after all.


	5. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

Thank you Far2addicted for beta-reading.

* * *

 _Clinging like black pearls_

 _to the leaves, to the windows,_

 _once again, the rain fell._

* * *

"Naruto."

He hadn't changed very much over the years. His hair was just as unbrushed as it had been the last time they had seen each other. And his clothes were certainly less tattered than they had been back then. But when Sasuke looked into his eyes, there was a spark of something that he had never seen before. Well, at least not for a long time anyway.

"You're a student here?" Naruto said quietly. Sasuke couldn't tell whether the question was real or rhetorical, but it no longer mattered when Naruto stepped toward him leaving just few feet between them. "I can't believe this," he added under his breath.

Sasuke said nothing. How could he when all his words had been turned into mashed potato?

Suddenly, there was a flash of pain in his jaw and his body was thrown backward. His feet stumbled back a few steps before he tripped over his shoelace and fell to the ground with a thud. For a few seconds, nothing registered. Not the cars and buses passing them, the headlights that burned his eyes, nor the rustle of clothing as Naruto straightened himself. Not even his own raspy breathing. Everything was silent, until the throb in his jaw crept up on him, growing more and more painful by the second.

"Urgh," he groaned, sitting up and cracking an eye open to glare at Naruto. "What the hell was that for?"

The reply came back as a growl. "For upping and leaving without bothering to tell anyone! You could've at least said goodbye, you bastard!"

Sasuke opened his mouth to protest, to tell him that he didn't even know he was leaving, but winced instead. As he stared at the concrete slabs under his hands and feet, he thought of the cracks in the pavement outside the gates of the children's home. The face in the window that always watched him pass by on the way to school. The same face that scrunched up whenever the ball was passed to Sasuke in the playground instead of him. The same face that smiled at him from the corner of his eyes.

He broke out of his reverie when a hand, glowing red with eczema, stretched out in front of his eyes. Above him, Naruto grinned, his teeth glinting in the blue and pink glow of a neon takeaway sign.

"Once a bastard, always a bastard, eh, Sasuke?" he joked.

Sasuke grasped his hand, scraping his fingernails over the red skin as payback for bruise that marred his jaw. Naruto's lips twitched for a second, but the happiness in his eyes persisted as he hoisted Sasuke up onto his feet.

"There's a party in my building right now, you know. Shikamaru's gonna be there, and that Ino girl. You're coming with me and I'm not taking no for an answer."

"Hn. You say that like I actually know or care about these people."

Naruto ignored him, walking off without bothering to look back. He didn't need to. Sasuke rubbed the sore spot on his jaw with the pad his thumb, staring at the shadow of Naruto's back. _That guy knows me too well_ , he thought with a wry smile before following.

* * *

Fingers drumming against the beer in her hand, Ino stared at the wall. It didn't matter that she'd already met a whole bunch of potential friends, or that her favourite song was blasting out the speakers, or even that old Ino would've loved this. Something didn't sit right in her stomach. Every inch of her skin shivered, but it wasn't with cold. She knew the reason, but there was no point in thinking about it. There was just no point in dwelling over the past.

"You drinking that?"

The leather couch sank and she wrinkled her nose as the smell of cigarettes wafted up her nose. He didn't wait for an answer before he pried the beer from between her fingers and swigged.

"You stink," she said, her gaze never leaving the wall.

"So do you."

Ino snorted. "I'm wearing perfume. Nina Ricci, if we're going to get specific."

"Exactly."

She waved her hand and knocked the can into his face just as he was gulping it down. He coughed violently as some liquid went down the wrong way. Beer trickled down his chin and dripped onto his clothes, soaking puddles into his t-shirt and old jeans.

"Be careful. It stains," she warned blithely, and he shot her a deadly glare.

With one last shuddering cough, he groaned, "how mature of you."

A wisp of a smile flickered onto her lips. "Says the man who just dribbled all over his clothes."

From the corner of her eye, Shikamaru's mouth twitched and he rolled his eyes. He was watching her, analyzing her, and she knew it. But she couldn't bring herself to meet his eyes just yet. Maybe it was because it was easier if she didn't, or maybe it was because she knew that she would choke on her words if she did. It wasn't that she didn't want to talk, just that she was afraid of saying it out loud. Hearing herself say the words would be like opening a can of shaken up cola. Once she started, she wouldn't stop until the can was empty. In cases like this, the can was better left unopened.

"So," he began and Ino knew what came next. "Are you going to tell me why you're sitting here all dejected and the like? You look like a moody teenager, Ino."

For the first time that evening, she looked at him, eyes narrowed. "Can you _stop_ looking at me like that? It's so _annoying_."

He frowned. "Like what?"

"Like I'm an equation."

He opened his mouth to speak, but a familiar voice cut him off.

"Hey, Shikamaru, Ino! I want you to meet this guy. He's a real grumpy cat but you'll get to like him eventually."

Naruto stood over them, his fingers clasped around the collar of a guy who Ino had never seen before, but from the expression on his face he was very close to pummelling Naruto to the ground. She'd never appreciated Naruto's presence more than she did at that point. If Shikamaru kept poking his pineapple head in places where it didn't belong, Ino would eventually lose her cool. And new Ino would never lose her cool. She couldn't afford to, not when she was doing so well at securing her new life. So when she smiled at Naruto's friend – who reminded her of the freaky barista man in the café – she brushed off Shikamaru's sharp eyes as they watched her through the evening.

* * *

"Has anyone ever told you that you have pretty eyes?"

Sasuke sipped at his beer, tugging his arm away from the harpy that clasped it so tightly. "My eyes are anything but pretty," he remarked, as his eyes met those of Naruto from across the room.

All he'd done was sit on a couch, listening to conversation and enjoying the refreshments when he had been grasped by the forearm and dragged into a corner where a strange red-haired girl kept petting him. Earlier, Naruto had tried his hardest to distract Karin – aforementioned harpy- from Sasuke by juggling oranges – a trick he learned from someone called Jiraiya that came in handy when picking up women. However, Naruto had already downed half their supply of alcohol, so one of the oranges now lay splattered across the car park in a massacre of pulp, flesh and juice alongside a pool of his vomit.

"Sorry, bastard," he'd wheezed, holding his stomach with one hand. "They just went round and round in circles, yeah, and the next thing I know…" he blanched at the thought.

It wouldn't have worked anyway.

He winced as her bright red fingernails pinched his skin through his sleeve. "Why don't you just grow your nails out rather than sticking plastic on them?" he asked.

Karin pushed up her glasses and smoothed a stray piece of hair down. "They're called acrylics, Sasuke, not plastic" she said, splaying out her fingernails for him to see. "Do you like them?"

"No," he said. "And acrylic is plastic."

She forced a smile. "Come on now, Sasuke. They're really nice, aren't they? I paid a lot of money for these." Her hand released his arm and crept its way into his hair, where she began to massage her false nails into his scalp, much to his irritation. "You can't say that doesn't feel good, hmm?" she added and he held back a sneeze at the pungent smell of her perfume.

Sasuke wrenched Karin's arm away from his head, crushing her wrist in his fist. Her eyes widened, bottom lip trembling as she tried desperately to pry his fingers open, but they wouldn't budge. For the last hour, he had managed to put up with her roaming fingers and her jokes which rivalled those found in Christmas crackers. But touching his hair in such a way had brought up too many memories of his mother stroking his hair as fat tears slid down his red face.

"It doesn't matter what your father says," she'd say to him, kissing the top of his head. "It's okay to cry sometimes."

Those memories were held closely in his heart, never to be tainted or contaminated by the plastic nails of a girl he didn't know, or even want to know for that matter.

His eyes darkened as he turned to Karin. "Go find another dog to pet. I'm not interested," he hissed and sidled off back into the living room, leaving Karin to pout in the corner, her friend squeezing her arm in comfort.

Naruto's voice echoed around the rooms, and Sasuke had no problem finding him within the mass of students. He pushed his way through arms and sides, paying no heed to the feel of small female fingers touching his arms and front with long painted nails of every colour. They were all the same to him, these girls with their fake tans and teeny tiny dresses that left barely anything to the imagination. Very much like the Karin girl who had been harassing him only moments ago.

The music thumped against his heart, and he felt the synthetic beat blast through his body. Beads of sweat dotted along his brow. Somehow, it felt to him as though the number of people at this party had drastically increased, or maybe he was just paranoid. Probably a little bit of both. The humid air, stuffy with perspiration, clogged up his lungs and his feet trod on others' as he stumbled through the bodies. He wheezed for breath and wished that he could find an empty room with open windows, but he didn't even have to check to know that every room was filled with students, leaving no space for a failure like him.

An arm swung around, and he found himself squished flat next to a window with beer staining his sweaty shirt. It didn't matter. The shirt had been a used one pulled up off his bedroom floor anyway. He lay against the wall for a few seconds, pushing and pulling air through his teeth as if he was sewing with it.

But when he twisted around, a flash of pink caught the very edge of his eye.

At first he thought that it was the music that made him see things. It certainly had before during a certain phase he went through at school. Pressing his face up to the glass until his breath clouded it like frost, he squinted at the line of trees behind the car park below. And there it was; a dot of pink, followed by a pair of arms and then a pair of legs. A whole body: a girl, clad in mint green pyjamas, stood barefooted on the edge of the car park, half shadowed by the green canopy above.

And she was looking at him.

He jumped back from the window with a start, and started to struggle past the other students. Tripping over a series of legs and feet and knocking countless beers out of hands, he lurched through the living room and out of the door. From his peripheral vision, he saw Naruto look at him with confusion as he bolted out the door.

"Sasuke?! Oi, Sasuke!"

He heard his name being called in the same raspy voice from his childhood, but he didn't stop. He didn't want to listen.

He had no idea what he was doing. Maybe the beer was turning his brain to cotton wool. Maybe he just felt like he needed to go and tell this pink blob, this pink person, that standing around in pyjamas in city car parks is a decision that could only end badly. Whoever she was, she needed to go home. But at that point when he had noticed her, she had been staring right at him, as if she were waiting for him.

He frowned. It couldn't be possible; he couldn't place her in his memories. As far as he was concerned, they had never met. He tottered down flights of stairs and held on to the rail when his feet didn't listen to his brain. On the ground floor, he noticed a fire exit behind a set of lockers. He pushed open the bar and it flew back against the bricks with the wind.

She was still stood there, waiting. He had to squint to make her out, but the blob of pink was as striking as white on black.

His steps were unsteady as he lumbered across the tarmac.

"Hey..!" he called out to her, her silhouette growing bigger and more defined with every step. "You should go home! You'll freeze like that!"

He was close enough now to notice her features. She was tiny, childlike in comparison to his height, but the look in her eyes told him differently. It was a look of experience, of wars and hopelessness. One might find the same look on a veteran caught in the flashbacks of times spent with comrades who never made it out to see the sun. She looked like poppies and disasters. A disaster wearing pyjamas with little green frogs on them.

He stopped about seven feet away from her and she looked him over in his drunken mess. Her gaze caught on his greasy hair, his dirty clothes and the bags beneath his eyes. She gave him a certain look, but he couldn't figure out what it meant and before he could ask, she turned and began to walk between the trees, her fingernails scraping against the bark of every tree she passed.

Sasuke frowned, wondering where the hell she'd even come from. From the distant whoosh of cars, he knew that the only thing beyond the trees was a motorway.

"Wait!" He whispered, looking around to see where she'd disappeared to. He glimpsed frogs and mint green sticking out from behind a tree trunk and followed her. "Hey! You can't just go wandering around here!" he call, his voice rising.

"Says who?"

He shivered. It was the first time she had spoken, and her voice was airy and condescending. He walked around another tree, his feet catching on the roots a little, before he saw her leaning against a trunk opposite him.

"Says who?" she repeated, folding her arms across her chest. There was a cool breeze and Sasuke felt mildly disturbed that she didn't have any goosebumps.

Sasuke swallowed nervously."Says me."

She blinked at him, pursing her lips.

"There's a motorway down there," he said, waving a hand toward the sound of cars. Part of him wished that some of the cars would collide. "If you're not careful, you'll be hit by a car. You could die."

She gave him a wry smile, and tapped her finger against her bicep. "You look like you've been hit by a car."

"I wish I was."

Her smile disappeared. "No you don't. Your way of wishing is wrong."

"How so?" he asked. From this close, he could see now that her eyes were green. Not a leafy green or a forest green, but a green like a dirty lake. A green that reminded him of scales and swamps. He gulped when a familiar tickling of tiny legs crept across his skin.

"When you feel like trash, you're supposed to wish for something that would make you better. Being turned into roadkill wouldn't make you feel less like a mess." She paused and craned her neck to look at the night sky through the foliage. "The stars are out," she remarked softly. "It's your chance to wish for something better."

He followed her gaze, squinting through the greenery. At first he saw nothing, but then a tiny shred of white, just beside a leaf, caught his eye. And then the whole sky erupted into stars and Sasuke wondered whether there were so many of them watching over him this entire time. Earlier, all he'd seen was clouds.

He stared in awe, and the words were barely there when he breathed them out. "W-who are you?"

"Sakura."

Something jolted in his brain. His head spun. _Sakura…Sakura…Sakura_. He flinched and snapped his head in her direction, except she'd disappeared, leaving behind nothing but leaves and a cold breeze.

"Sakura," he said, clutching his throat as he wheezed air in and out from between his teeth. The purple cover clouded his head, taunting him. On and off, the faulty bulb in his head flickered and the words he'd found written in his book spread across the walls of his mind like jutting engravings.

"Saassuke! You out here, bastard?!"

There was someone calling his name.

His head swirled. His knees collapsed beneath him and the entire world shattered into darkness.


	6. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

Thank you Far2addicted for beta-reading.

* * *

 _He came like a dream,_

 _Of kisses, lilies, passion_

 _And the scent of death._

* * *

His head throbbed, and when he cracked his eyes open into slits, the textured ceiling paper blurred into a mass of green, red and blue. The throbbing spiked to pain, and he clamped his eyes shut again.

"Sasuke?"

Someone was calling him, but they were so far away, like they were screaming at him from out on a dusty horizon as the sun burned out his retinas. It was darker with his eyes closed, more peaceful. It was a shame that he couldn't close his ears too.

"Bastard? You awake yet?"

It was the same voice from before, from when he had fallen down into the bark and the dirt, when the leaves had tickled his eyelids.

"Come on, Sasuke, you can't hide in there forever, ya know? I'm getting bored waiting for you out here."

"Shh, idiot! He could be in pain for all we know." That was a girl's voice. It was familiar too, but not quite as familiar as the raspy twang that called his name every once in a while.

"Ino, we already checked him for injuries. He wasn't hurt or anything, he just fainted…and from the looks of it, managed to jab his head on a tree root."

"Heh, and he calls _me_ an idiot."

Sasuke's eyes slowly slid open, revealing nothing but a blurry mass of shapes and colours. Like finding the reality in abstract art, the yellow and orange blur hovering directly over him and reeking of instant ramen began to take the shape of Naruto. He blinked several times, until smudges turned into lines, and he could finally register the hot dampness seeping through his shirt from where Naruto's hand clasped his shoulder.

His eyes rolled around, assessing the situation. His head rested against a cushion that had been pounded flat with use. At least, that was what he could tell, judging by the fabric brushing against his ears and the hard arm of the couch, jutting through the makeshift pillow. He made a move to speak, but his throat singed and stung at the effort.

"Sasuke- Bastard!" Naruto whooped from above, and Sasuke was sure that he felt a droplet of saliva hit his cheek. "You're alive! You're too much of a grump for the afterlife. Did Big G kick you out for bringing down the mood?"

Sasuke forced the words out, despite the fire raging in his throat. "Get your sweaty hands off me, Idiot," he seethed.

He turned his head, registering the blonde girl from earlier, Ino, draped over the back of the battered, olive green couch that he was laying on, playing with the ends of her ponytail and watching him with curiosity. By the time he turned back, his insides trembled at the sight of Naruto's Cheshire Cat grin, the same grin that he remembered from a past of playgrounds, classrooms and blue crayons. He flinched as a large, clammy hand wiped itself across his forehead and cheeks, leaving a trail of grease, sweat and fingerprints.

"Oi, Naruto." The irritated drawl resound from the other side of the room. "Leave him alone. We still haven't asked him what the hell he was playing at."

He heard footsteps, before Shikamaru's face came into view, staring at him with a mixture of disgust and fascination, as if he were a lab specimen. Sasuke was sure that he'd looked at Naruto the same way.

Sasuke swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Where am I? What time is it?"

"Ino's place," Shikamaru said curtly. "And we left that party three hours ago. We had to carry you here. I only have an armchair. Naruto doesn't even have a couch. He also dropped you several times when we were carrying you up the stairs."

Out of the corner of his eye, Naruto awkwardly scratched the back of his head, but Sasuke barely paid any attention.

"What happened?" he asked.

Shikamaru huffed, a wry smile on his lips. "We were hoping you would be the one to tell us," he said. "You ran out of that party like you were running for the bathroom. I can't imagine why, but we found you in the trees at the back of the car park."

Something clicked, and Sasuke's mind suddenly started to swirl with images of trees, minty green frog pyjamas and the spray of stars through a leafy canopy. He felt his face grow cold and damp. His hands, which had been resting on his stomach this entire time, curled into tight fists.

 _"The Stars are out…It's your chance to wish for something better."_

It couldn't have been real.

 _"Who are you?"_

 _"Sakura."_

It wasn't possible. There was no way. But she was there. He saw her, living, blinking, possibly breathing? He hadn't been paying that much attention. But that was beyond the point. There was no possible way that the girl had some kind of link with all the strange phenomena that had been happening at home. She couldn't have had anything to do with the purple notebook. She couldn't have.

Ino threw her ponytail over her shoulder and reached out to press her hand to his forehead, frowning and tilting her head to the side a little. "Hmnn? Are you okay? You've suddenly gone really warm."

"Sasuke." Shikamaru regarded him carefully. "If you want to give us an explanation, then now's the time to spill."

Ino rolled her eyes. "Shikamaru, this isn't an interrogation, you know? Sasuke doesn't have to talk if he doesn't feel up to it." She looked at Sasuke, biting her lip anxiously.

Their words seemed to echo at the very back of his mind. The pink girl, _her_ words, they ricocheted through his head at eighty miles per hour, taunting him with impossibilities and paradoxes. He heard a series of clicks, as Shikamaru – a cigarette dangling between his teeth ─ struggled to get his lighter to spark on the last dregs of fuel. Eventually, a small flame flickered to life and remained long enough for Shikamaru to light his cigarette before fizzling out.

"You'd better not get ash all over my floor," Ino warned Shikamaru, eyes narrowed in distaste. She turned back to the couch. "Sasuke," she said quietly, "even though we've only just met, you still gave us a scare. Maybe it was all that beer that made you go all haywire, but Naruto was really worried. Me and Shikamaru don't really know you, but Naruto swears that he saw that something was troubling you -"

"You're too quiet for a stunt like that," Naruto cut her off, chewing his bottom lip as he clasped his hands in front of him. "And you weren't even that drunk."

Ino glared at the blonde boy before clearing her throat and continuing. "As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, Naruto thinks something bothered you earlier. We're just concerned, especially since we found you dead to the world in a pile of twigs and leaves." She frowned, perplexed, as Sasuke stared, pale as a sheet and glistening with cold sweat, at the far corner of the room. "You certainly didn't seem drunk enough to pass out," she added. "Maybe we should take him to a doctor-"

"She had pink hair."

From the corner of his eye, Ino froze. Shikamaru took a drag from his cigarette and quietly assessed the situation. On Sasuke's other side, Naruto stopped scratching at the scabs in his scalp for a moment to raise an eyebrow at his best friend.

"Is that some kind of weird fantasy of yours, Bastard?" Naruto's mouth twitched into a smug grin. "I didn't know you had a pink hair fetish. Three years really changed you, eh?"

At any other time or place, Sasuke would have dropkicked Naruto for a comment like that. But given the circumstances, the strange, unreal and extremely disturbing circumstances, he could only suppress a shiver.

"And frog pyjamas," he mumbled. "Green ones. But not the same green as her eyes." He paused. "She had horrible eyes. Like swamps, or reptiles."

The room fell into silence for several seconds, and then Ino let out a shrill scream.

* * *

All Ino was aware of was the silence as the room, thrumming with Sasuke's words.

 _"She had pink hair. And Frog Pyjamas. Green ones. But not the same green as her eyes."_

Before she knew it, a scream had torn out of her throat and her heart pounded in shock and grief. She sank down to the floor, huddled to the back of the couch. It wasn't possible. It couldn't be. She slapped a hand over her mouth, as hot tears dribbled down her chin, mingling with her muffled sobs. _She_ was the one who had bought those pyjamas as a birthday gift. _She_ was the one who had convinced her, when they left high school, to dye her hair pink.

She was vaguely aware of Naruto crawling around the couch and touching her hair. "Hey Ino?" she heard him call her name in an attempt to comfort her. But his voice betrayed him. He was clueless as to what was going on. "Ino? What's going on? Do ya know something about a pink frog girl? Is she hot?"

She scrunched up her eyes, sobbing deeper into her palm. His words had only ripped open more scabs, and now the top was off, her wounds which she had forced closed now bled afresh.

"What do you know, Ino?"

Ino forced her eyes open and turned toward Shikamaru, who stood over her, his cigarette between his fingers.

"I knew that you had some big secret that you were all touchy about," he said. "I could see it in the way you are. But it seemed too deep and troublesome, and I didn't really want to get involved." He crouched down to look at her face, and pulled her hand away from her mouth. She fought back, pulling her hand out of his grip. She looked hideous when she cried. Sakura had always teased her about that. Shikamaru couldn't see her like this. But the boy didn't seem to care. He just adjusted his fingers and held her wrist away from her face. "It's unusual, if not completely absurd, that your big secret – whatever it is – now has something to do with Sasuke, someone who you've only just met." When her eyes rolled away from his, he added, "Ino, if you know something that will help Sasuke make sense of these _hallucinations_ , or whatever on earth he was seeing that made him go walkabout, then telling us would be useful right about now."

Ino's tears slowed and slowed, until she didn't feel that she could cry anymore. The explosion was over. Now, all she was left with was the residual mushroom cloud.

Sasuke sat up on the couch. "She said her name was Sakura," he offered. "She hasn't left me alone since I moved here."

Ino stiffened with a frown and wiped her face with the back of the hand that wasn't imprisoned by Shikamaru's fingers. "Moved here? Where did you move to?" The words were like spitting out poison. They hurt her tongue, because part of her, deep inside, already knew what Sasuke's answer would be.

"439 Yukiji Street. It's on the other side of Konoha."

Ino blanched and wiped her runny nose with the cuff of her sleeve. "You've been having some weird things happen, haven't you?" she laughed, blithely, staring at the carpet and willing it to burst into flames and engulf the lot of them. "I bet you're staying in her bedroom too, the pink one."

Behind her, Sasuke coughed into his hand before running the same hand through his hair. "Yeah…How did you know?"

For a moment, Ino said nothing. On one side of her, she heard Naruto mutter something along the lines of "You have a pink bedroom, bastard?" The memories of countless homeowners and desperate salesmen slid through her head.

"It was always the same." Her voice was slow and controlled. "Whenever someone moved in, they'd leave again after a couple of months, claiming that they felt bad vibes from it. I don't know too much, but some said that it was haunted by something evil." She felt her throat tighten, and her next words came out in a squeak. "I always cried, because there was no way that it was evil. Sakura was…She was my best friend. She was always helping me." Ino glanced around her room. "Hell, she helped me get _here_." She released a shuddering breath. "I should've helped her."

All four of them were quiet as Ino's words sank in. Sasuke was the first to break the ice.

"Hn. Evil isn't really the word. She keeps reading my books. She even left a note in my book asking if I can buy her a bookmark." His mouth twitched, verging on either a smile or a frown. "From the looks of it, she likes Kafka."

Ino gave a bitter laugh, wrenching her hand out of Shikamaru's grasp. He just shrugged and took a drag at his cigarette. Naruto curled up on the floor, behind the arm of the couch.

"So, is she, erm… ya know, dead or something?"

She gave him a brief nod and a barely audible, "yeah."

Naruto began to chew on a hangnail. "How'd she die?" he asked.

Ino pressed her lips together. She heard Shikamaru sigh, as he was quick to realise that this was all she would tell them. Of course, she had no intention of talking about the death of her lifelong best friend. Who would? Every question they asked about Sakura was like a nail being pushed deeper and deeper into her skin. Eventually, they would hit bone.

* * *

"I'd better be off, Hinata. You should sleep. You have a lecture tomorrow, as you already know."

Hinata heard a creak as Neji stood from the edge of her bed. His footsteps padded closer, and there was a click as he placed the voice recorder containing all of their French practice on Hinata's desk beside her. He sighed, and his steps faded slightly as he walked toward the door.

"Neji?" she called, the fluffy sleeve of her dressing gown sliding down her arm. Hanabi had sworn to her that the dressing gown was lilac, but then again, little sisters were like mischievous elves. They had a tendency to lie. She could've been wearing an orange dressing gown with cartoon hot dogs on it for all she knew.

There was a rustle and she knew that Neji was looking at her, listening with patience.

"T-Thank you Neji," she said. "B-Bonne nuit et fais de beaux rêves." She fiddled with the tie of her gown. "I think my p-pronunciation is getting better."

Although she couldn't see his face, she had a feeling that Neji was smiling.

"You've worked hard today."

Hinata understood immediately that this was his way of telling her that she had improved. He had too much pride to tell her directly. He'd always had too much pride, even from when they were children, and he'd considered it shameful to be seen with someone like her. Nobody wanted to be associated with the blind girl, except Hanabi, who sneaked into her room every night to hold her older sister's hands and talk about her day. In the morning, it would be a different story.

"Neji?" she asked again, this time quieter. "The cat in the Dojo, the one that always t-tripped me up, what c-colour was it?"

The room sunk into silence, broken only by the brush of Hinata's sleeves against the desk.

"It was a silver tabby cat." There was a long pause, as if he was considering something. "Bonne nuit, Hinata," he said at last, and left the room, switching off the lamp behind him.

* * *

Sasuke managed to find Itachi's car and manoeuvre it out from where he'd parked it between two cars on the pavement. He drove home, his face pensive and unmoving as he processed the events that had happened that evening. She was dead. Sakura was _dead_. It sounded ridiculous to him. Actually, no. It was completely, absolutely, one hundred percent absurd. He, Sasuke Uchiha, was being haunted by a dead girl who died in his new house, and he is apparently doomed to deal with her, just because he landed himself with the pink bedroom. He remembered the day that they'd moved in, and how Itachi had forced him to have the larger, more girly room. For one second, he wondered whether, if the tables had been turned, Itachi would have met Sakura instead.

He parked the car on the drive and locked it manually because Itachi couldn't afford a fancy car that locked itself at the click of a button and a flash of light. He walked up the drive and stood on the porch, banging his fists against the front door.

There was a sound. A trudge of feet against gravel that grew closer and closer, until Sasuke turned to lock eyes with a boy around his own age, walking a large Pyrenean Mountain Dog. Sasuke searched his face, recognising him as the boy in the car, with the hard eyes, who has driven past his house days earlier. The boy gave him a brief nod, which Sasuke didn't bother to return, and continued walking his dog past the house and down the street.

One minute later, the door opened, revealing Itachi dressed in his pyjamas and nursing a cup of steaming tea. He gave Sasuke a quick glance over, then stepped back to let him in.

"You brought my car back," Itachi said, taking a sip at his tea. "And you're not that drunk, from the looks of it." Sasuke shut the door behind him and locked it with the key that Itachi had left dangling in the lock.

"I only had a couple of beers."

Itachi gave him a wry smile. "I half expected that I'd have to take the bus tomorrow." He took another sip of tea and steam rose from his pale tongue when he added, "not that I'd have minded."

Sasuke snorted. "Hn," he grunted, and entered the living room opposite, plonking himself down on the couch. He heard a series of footsteps from the kitchen, before his mother entered dressed in a plum nightdress and a white dressing gown. Her eyes lit up with relief at the sight of him, and she immediately hurried over to his side.

"Sasuke dear, where on earth have you been? I've been worried sick."

She reached up and pulled him into a maternal embrace. He could smell the perfume she wore every day to work. It was the same sweet perfume that she always wore, ever since he and Itachi were children, and it reminded him of hug and kisses and apple cinnamon pies in the summer.

"It's one in the morning," he said as she began to stroke his hair, just as she always did whenever he was upset or she needed reassurance. "What are you still doing up?"

"I couldn't sleep knowing that my baby boy was out and about doing who knows what."

He almost laughed. "I'm eighteen, mother. I'm not a baby."

She pulled away and gave him a stern look that made him want to crawl deeper into the couch. "You'll always be my baby boy, Sasuke, even when you're married with children of your own, and by then, you'll understand exactly how I feel."

He looked at the ground because his mother's eyes seemed far too deep, and he was afraid that he wouldn't be able to swim if he looked into them too much. Marriage and children. The thought seemed so very far away.

"Mother?"

Mikoto tilted her head. "Hmm?"

"Do you…Do you believe in gho-?"

He was interrupted by a clink of fingernails against crockery, and Sasuke turned to see Itachi leaning against the doorframe, watching him with intensity and something else that he couldn't name. Mikoto smiled at her eldest son, but Itachi's eyes only bored into Sasuke's as he paid no heed to his mother's existence. One by one, Itachi's fingernails clinked against the mug of tea, one clink for each second that passed.

"Do you need something?" Sasuke asked.

Itachi walked forward and set his empty mug on the coffee table before making way to leave. "I'm just saying goodnight, Sasuke."

Sasuke suddenly remembered something, and rooted around in his pocket before throwing the car keys at Itachi, who caught them in his left hand as soon as he heard the tinkle of metal on metal.

"Your keys."

Itachi gave him one last, perplexed look. "Thank you, little brother," he said, then disappeared around the corner.

Sasuke swallowed. "He seems moody," he said to Mikoto.

She placed a comforting hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "He's just stressed, is all."

The two fell deep into conversation, and an hour passed before they had realized. When Mikoto began to yawn, Sasuke realised that he'd been keeping his mother awake all night. He offered to clear up the mugs on the coffee table, allowing a grateful Mikoto to go upstairs to bed. He was so busy clearing away cups and mugs that he didn't even register the creak of a floorboard just around the corner.

* * *

A/N:

LiliesBloom07 - Thank you for letting me know that you like the fic, because I wasn't sure whether or not I should even continue given how unsuccessful it has been. I know it's been ages since you sent that review, but I have major depression and it really made my day to know that someone actually appreciates the effort I put in. So yeah, thank you :)

Amely98 - It's funny you should say that; I was actually writing this chapter instead of studying for a literature test. Funny coincidence, right? And thank you for the encouragement. Like I said in the reply to LiliesBloom07 above, it's nice to know that my effort is appreciated, because I thought that this fic must be terrible considering how it has less than 500 views on here.


	7. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

Thank you Far2addicted for beta-reading.

* * *

 _Engraved in pure white,_

 _pastness bleeds into the now._

 _The ripple will spread._

* * *

"Hey, Sasuke."

Sasuke stared at the window opposite him. The universe hated him. It was the only explanation.

"You never told me that you're doing literature too."

Karin lounged against the wall beside him. Her red fingernails were tracing the sleeve of his jacket, slowly inching their way up and down his arm. He would've moved away, but the hall was crammed with students all waiting for the double doors of the Sarutobi Lecture Theatre to open, and he couldn't even move an inch.

"I almost decided to go into biology," Karin continued, "because I'm actually really good with anatomy and medicine and stuff, but then I decided that there's nothing better in the world than reading."

 _Liar._

"You should've stuck with biology." It was harsh, he knew, but necessary. There was a chance that she could read body language. He'd already told her directly during the party, but that obviously hadn't worked.

"You're such a tease! Don't be so mean."

Nope. She clearly couldn't take a hint.

Sasuke could've sworn that Karin was closer than she was five minutes ago, but he didn't want to look at her, partially because he didn't want her getting the wrong idea and thinking he was interested, but also because he was terrified that the warm doughy feeling around his left arm was actually a breast or two. _Great job_ _,_ _Sasuke,_ he thought. _Y_ _ou've only been here for what? A week? And you're already getting felt up by a girl who could turn into a potential stalker._

When the doors finally swung open, the swarm of students all attempting to squeeze themselves through provided Sasuke with the perfect opportunity to escape. He heard Karin call his name, but other than a glimpse of red hair, she was lost in the crowd. Despite being crushed on all sides, Sasuke felt like he was taking his first breath after being resurrected through CPR.

He managed to snag a seat on the end of a row at the back of the lecture theatre. He wasn't the kind of person to sit in the middle or the front. He hated the thought of dozens of other people watching the back of your head. Looking around, he spotted Karin squeezed against the wall in her seat. He hated those seats right against the wall as well. Much too claustrophobic. And besides, if he had to leave the theatre for any reason – phone call, toilet, ghostly apparition – he would want to leave quietly without disrupting a whole row of people in the process.

The class had settled, pens and notebooks on desks, but their lecturer hadn't arrived yet. People chatted among themselves and Sasuke tapped his pen against the desk. It was a half-used biro that he'd stolen from Itachi's work bag because he couldn't face going out and buying a new one.

Fifteen minutes later, a man who looked to be in his thirties with premature gray hair slipped in through the doors. The man plonked a stack of books and papers next to the computer on the desk at the front of the room. When he looked up to face the class, Sasuke was surprised to see that he was wearing a bandana across the lower half of his face. The man bent toward the microphone, which let out a screech.

"Yo, everyone."

The class stilled. Sasuke heard a few snickers and whispers about the bandana, but otherwise, the class was silent.

"My name is Dr Kakashi Hatake, and you may not refer to me as anything but. You may not ask me about my bandana, my hobbies, or even my favourite book. You will turn up to my lectures on time, even if I don't, and you will work your hardest on my course, whether you're working solo or as a group." He paused. "Welcome to your first literature lecture."

For somebody who was supposed to be good with words, Sasuke couldn't decide on a word that adequately summed up his first impression of this man. Shocking? Insane? Downright weird? And were university professors even allowed to walk into work wearing a bandana anyway?

As if he was pleased by the reaction from his new class, Dr Hatake's eyes crinked in amusement. He clicked and typed on the computer for a minute, then a powerpoint presentation was projected on the large screen at the front of the room. He took them through a brief overview about the course and important dates before he launched into a detailed discussion of the historical context behind the first book on the reading list.

By that point, Sasuke had already zoned out. He couldn't help it- the seats were cushioned, the theatre was warm and the lights were dimmed to display the presentation. It also didn't help that the first book was Pride and Prejudice. He'd already studied it before, and so everything that Dr Hatake was saying wasn't new information to him. And of all the books to study, Pride and Prejudice couldn't be more boring. Maybe to some people the thought of a bunch of women sitting around and discussing love and marriage was exciting, but not Sasuke. To him, it was as boring as taking a turn about the room.

When Dr Hatake began explaining the role of epistemology, Sasuke found himself staring intently at the bandana. It was black and red with paisleys. He wondered if Dr Hatake had a whole drawer filled with freshly laundered bandanas, and whether he would turn up to the next lecture wearing a different coloured one.

"I bet he's hiding a constant coldsore problem under there."

The voice was light, thin as air and oh so familiar. He turned his head.

 _No, no, no, no…_

* * *

Hinata was wary about using her cane to gage the way through the girl's toilets. According to Neji, they were located just outside the lecture theatre, so at this time, they were sure to be busy and she didn't want to cause a fuss or draw too much attention to herself. As she made her way through the toilets, keeping a free hand on the wall, she didn't feel anything around her other than the counter and the sinks, so maybe it wasn't as busy as she thought. Of course, Neji – her shadow – was waiting for her outside, and she didn't want to keep him waiting, so she walked a little faster with more confidence in her steps. When her cane collided with something solid, she flinched.

"Oh, I'm s-sorry. I didn't know you were there."

Hinata heard a wet sniff. "It's okay, I didn't know you were there either."

Hinata froze. "A-are you okay?"

"Actually, no," the other girl said. Her voice was scratchy and rough. "Some stuff came up lately that I thought I wouldn't have to deal with anymore. Everything's just getting to me, that's all."

She thought about the girl's words. Clearly this girl was stuck in a crisis. She opened her mouth to speak, but she was interrupted by the sound of Neji's voice from outside.

"Hinata? What's going on?"

Hinata realised that Neji must've heard her apologising to the girl. People normally stayed out of her way, treating her as if she was voiceless too, so it wasn't unusual for Neji to become suspicious when somebody did speak to her. It would be a lie to say that there hadn't been a few 'incidents' before.

"Everything is okay, N-Neji. I'll be out soon."

"Who was that?" Hinata heard the girl ask.

"Just N-Neji. He's my cousin. He helps me, because, erm…" She held up the cane a little.

"Oh, of course. Right. Sorry. I'm sorry. "

"That's okay." Hinata paused for a moment. "Do you have a F-French lecture now?"

There was another sniff and Hinata heard the sound of skin rubbing against skin. The girl must've been wiping her eyes.

"Yeah. The theatre just down the hall, right?"

"Yes. I do French too. So d-does Neji," Hinata said. "If you want, y-you can sit with us."

The girl made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a release of air. A sound of relief. There was another wet sniffle. "Are you sure?"

Hinata nodded. "If you w-wait for me to finish in the b-bathroom, then we can go in together."

Neji's voice echoed across the walls. "Hinata?"

She heard a rustle of clothing and a scrunch of tissue paper. "Thank you, really. I'm assuming you're the one and only Hinata."

Hinata smiled. "Yeah, Hinata Hyuuga. You know N-Neji's name already. W-what's yours?"

"Ino Yamanaka."

* * *

It was twenty past one in the afternoon when Naruto held his face in his hands for the fourth time that day. Only one day into the course and already the content looked like jargon to him. If it weren't for his gratitude towards Jiraiya, he wouldn't have bothered studying quite so hard. But he wasn't the same kid on the streets anymore. He had a chance now.

He closed the psychology textbook, having had enough for one day. His head was swimming with theories and studies and complexes. What kind of self-respecting boy would have a thing for his mother of all people? And he wasn't going to ask unless he wanted to be slapped, but he was pretty sure that women weren't jealous of men for their…their _bits_. He shuddered and swallowed the urge to gag.

Naruto packed away his study materials and headed toward the nearest coffee shop. He didn't really like coffee, but he could order one of those frappucino things with all the fruit and the ice. It would probably chill his mind and calm his nerves better than coffee.

When he entered, the hot smell of strong coffee hit him. He walked up to the counter where a young man around his own age stood in an apron behind the counter. Although the coffee shop was swirling with pop music and modern art on the walls, the man looked sullen but stern. _So much for customer service,_ Naruto thought.

"Hey, erm, can I have one of those mango and lime fruity things, ya know which one I mean?"

The man – Naruto noticed that his name badge read 'Neji' – pursed his lips. "You mean a mango and lime frappe." It wasn't a question. Just a way of belittling Naruto's vocabulary, it seemed.

"Yeah, a frappe," Naruto replied nervously.

Neji turned and began to work on his order. Naruto clenched and unclenched his fingers nervously. There was no reason to feel anxious about ordering a drink; he knew that. But this Neji barista guy was the most intimidating person he'd ever met. It was a wonder that he even had a job with such a lack of people skills. And what had Naruto ever done to him? He was pretty much minding his own business, right?

Neji dumped the icy drink on the counter and held his palm out expectantly. Naruto fumbled for the money. He put the coins on the countertop because something about the position of Neji's palm felt like a martial arts stance, and then took his drink.

He was about to throw himself into a leather couch when something, or someone, caught his eye. Sitting at a two person table beside the window was a familiar-looking girl.

 _"There is one thing I can think of that you can't do, Dickless."_

The memory came gushing back to him like an avalanche.

 _"Hey! I have one, alright?! And I'm sure as hell that mine is way bigger than yours!"_

He remembered her cough like it was yesterday and not last week.

 _"I'm s-sorry."_

If the Neji guy's intimidation wasn't anxiety inducing enough, this really took the cake. Of all the things to say in front of a girl who was maybeperhapskindof one of the prettiest girls he'd ever seen, why did he have to say _that_? If Jiraiya was with him, he would have been laughed at and scorned for his lack of tact.

He stood up and walked over to the girl. When he lingered by her table, she moved her head in his direction, but didn't meet his eyes.

"C-Can I help you?"

"Erm, yeah actually," he said. "I know you probably don't, but do ya happen to remember hearing two guys shouting at each other in a hallway last week?"

She smiled gently. "Your voice," she said quietly. She blushed a little. "You were the b-boy in the hall. I remember your voice."

Naruto wanted to curl up in a corner. "Yeah, that was me. My name's Naruto Uzumaki by the way, and er, I just wanted to say I'm sorry."

"I'm Hinata. Why are you sorry?"

"For what you heard. I don't normally say stuff like that, but that guy was really weird, ya know? And he was saying stuff about dicks and I got pissed off, but I'm sorry that you heard it. "

"That's o-okay. I heard most of the c-conversation so I understand."

Naruto sighed in relief. "Can I sit here?" he asked, gesturing to the empty chair opposite her. "You seem like a real nice person and there aren't many nice people here, other than Sasuke and Shikamaru." He paused adding, "and Ino too, but I haven't seen her in a few days."

"I-Ino?" The girl, Hinata, asked. Her voice held a certain curiosity. "I-is her last name Yamanaka, by any chance?"

"Yeah! That's her! You know her?"

Hinata nodded. She looked as though she wanted to say something, but held back. "I met her this morning. W-we both study French. So does Neji."

"Neji? That grumpy looking guy over there?" He turned to look at Neji, but held back a scream when he realised that Neji was glaring at him viciously from across the room.

She smiled again. "H-he's staring at you isn't he?"

Naruto nodded, but realised his mistake and whispered, "Yep. He's looking at me like he wants to put me in his coffee grinder. Can he hear me all the way from over there?"

She looked like she was holding back a laugh, but instead of answering, she turned to look in Neji's direction and gave a brief nod. The result was immediate. Neji's posture relaxed slightly. Naruto knew that Neji would keep his eye on him, but for the most part, he went back to cleaning a cup.

"Is he your boyfriend or something?"

"Y-you don't need to whisper. But no, he's my cousin." She hesitated. "He's p-probably wary of you because you're talking to me."

Naruto frowned. "He thinks I'm trying to chat you up?"

"Maybe, but he does the s-same thing whenever anyone talks to me."

"Wow, so he's your cousin but he acts like a jealous boyfriend…" Naruto couldn't help but think back to the psychology textbook he was reading earlier.

This time, she giggled. "D-don't let him hear you s-say that! You're wrong though. I-it's not like that."

"What's it like then? If it's gross then don't tell me, please."

"Our d-dads are twins."

"Right."

"So although we're cousins, N-Neji is like a brother to me."

"I thought I said not to tell me if it's gross."

She smiled wide and shook her head. "H-he just looks after me, that's all. You'd be s-surprised how many people will try to t-take advantage of a blind girl."

Naruto felt embarrassed for thinking of anything less innocent. Neji was a biological half-brother and a legal cousin who watched out for her. That was all. _I've been spending way too much time with_ _Jiraiya_ _,_ he thought. _That Pervy old man's_ _starting to rub off on me._ The thought of anyone troubling someone with such a strong vulnerability sickened him. And Hinata seemed kind and caring too, which only made the thought even lower.

"There are people like that, huh?"

She nodded. "But I've got Neji. O-our family owns a dojo, so Neji was a s-student from childhood."

Naruto paled and glanced over at Neji, who, by the way he was eyeing Naruto every once in a while, could hear every word that they said. He must've had great hearing if he could eavesdrop from across the room over the jazzy background music that was playing in the shop. One wrong move and he would be flat on the ground.

"If your family owns a dojo, then why is he working here? I don't wanna be rude or anything, but people who own businesses are usually really really rich."

"It's o-only part time, a couple of afternoons a week. It's not m-much," she said, leaning in as if she were telling him a big secret, "but we're actually s-saving up so that we can start our own dojo in F-France. That's w-why we both do French, you see?" She then frowned. "I'd work p-part time myself, but it's d-difficult for me."

Naruto nodded, musing over all of this information. He'd never seen two relatives as supportive as these two in his life. From his time on the streets, all he had learned was that humans would bypass those in need, offering nothing but scorn and blame to people who, more often than not, were victims of circumstance. Seeing two people working together to help each other like this warmed his heart. It was the same warm feeling that he felt when he'd woken up on a backstreet to find Jiraiya crouching over him and pulling the bits of noodle and Chinese takeaway out of his hair.

He grinned, even though he knew that she couldn't see it. But from behind the counter, Neji watched with curiosity. "Well," he said, "if you or your cousin need any help with anything, then I'm your guy. We're friends now, right?"

Hinata smiled wide. "Y-yeah."

* * *

"Shut up," Sasuke hissed under his breath for the hundredth time. If he spoke any louder, he'd receive a multitude of stares and concerned faces. Parents would take one look at him and then quietly pull their children in the opposite direction.

"Why? They can't see or hear me. Well, I don't think so anyway."

He didn't answer, choosing to ignore her in the same way that he did in the lecture that morning. So far, this was the longest time she'd stuck around.

He heard her huff. "If you're not going to talk to me, then can we at least go somewhere quiet where you can? Thinking about it, where are we going?"

" _I'm_ going to a seminar," he whispered. " _Y_ _ou're_ going to leave me alone."

"Hmm? I thought you and your friends were trying to get Ino-pig to tell you all about me...maybe I was wrong then."

Sasuke stopped where he was, earning himself a few pairs of curious eyes. Her words rang through his mind over and over until he was sure that the group of international Chinese students to his right were wondering whether they should ask him if he needed help. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and held it up to his ear. Seeing his phone, the Chinese students relaxed and walked on. With the phone against his ear, he went through the same old rituals of 'Hi, how are you? I'm good thanks', pulling out a mechanical chuckle here and there.

"How did you know about that?" he said, louder.

There was a pause. "I can go wherever you go. But even if you don't see me, I can still be there."

"So it's your choice, then?"

"It's my choice whether I let you see me," she said. She added quietly "Although I wish Ino-pig wouldn't cry so much. It hurts to watch."

"What about everyone else? If you wanted them to see you, would they?"

Sakura jogged a little ahead of him until she was walking backwards and facing him. To say that she looked out of place in her frog pyjamas would be an understatement. The sky had turned grey and it looked like it was going to rain. Compared to the jackets and coats around her, her pyjamas looked pathetically thin.

She shook her head. "I've found that only a few people have been able to see me. And when I say a few, I mean that hardly anyone can see me. Out of all the people who moved into our house," she said, smiling when Sasuke bristled at 'our', "only one of them has been able to. He must've thought I was a demon or something because he left and didn't come back for three days. When he did, he just packed some stuff and was gone. Other than that, the only person who saw me was an old woman who passed by the house when I was sitting on the porch. She said that I'd catch a cold if I didn't get changed."

"Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Catch a cold."

"I can't feel cold," she muttered. "And you can't catch a cold from being cold. It doesn't work like that."

He almost smiled. He pulled open the door to the building that he remembered from looking at a map earlier and headed toward the stairs. Jogging up the stairs would be sufficiently slower than taking the elevator, but if he wanted to find out more about what she can and can't do, then so be it. He had ten minutes until his seminar started anyway.

"What about that stunt you pulled with the notebook?" he asked, cautiously. The memory still made his skin crawl with spiders.

"After what happened with the last guy who could see me, I didn't want to scare you off by randomly appearing at the end of a hall or something. The notebook is mine, that's why I can write on it."

The staircase was narrow and Sasuke moved to the side to dodge a boy who was coming down. "I'm guessing it's the same with anything of yours?"

Sakura shook her head and her pink hair shook around her head. In his head, Sasuke admitted that he was mildly impressed by how she could walk backwards up three flights of stairs. It was an amusing trick, although rather useless with nobody to see it.

"It depends. Ino-pig gave me that notebook so it's easy for me to touch it or manipulate it like I did. But other things like reading your books," she said, and Sasuke thought back to Kafka's novel, "it takes energy on my part." She glanced down at his feet which had gone from jogging to plodding. "Kind of like how climbing up stairs exhausts you the longer you do it."

"Shut up," he said, half-panting and grunting from the effort of climbing stairs. "I have reasons for being too tired to climb the stairs. Why did you come here today anyway? Are you following me around just to bother me?"

"I get bored inside the house all the time," she whined. "Plus, you haven't run off yet which means that I can actually speak to someone for the first time in ages. You're not going to deny me the pleasure of social interaction, are you?"

He shook his head in dismissal as he wheezed for breath. By the time he reached the right floor, his lungs were struggling for air and his bones ached. If he was correct, the room where his seminar took place was around the G corridor, which was to his right. His eyes trailed along the room numbers that were plated in cheap, gold metal on each door.

 _4.11…4.12…4.13…_

Room 4.14.

The handle was slightly stiff as he cracked open the door to find a colour co-ordinated room with red tables and red-cushioned chairs. There were six tables in the centre that had been organised into a horseshoe shape. On one side of the horseshoe sat two boys. One of the boys had a large build and red hair, and was playing nervously with his fingers. The other, who was slim as a beanstalk with dyed white hair, gave Sasuke a sharp grin as he entered.

"I'll speak to you later," he said into the phone, which he then dropped back into his pocket.

He walked around the room and took a seat next to the white haired boy who quickly introduced himself as Suigetsu and the red haired boy as Jugo. Sakura was just as bad as Karin when it came to taking a hint, as she followed him around the tables and sat cross-legged on the floor behind his chair, kicking it occasionally when he refused to talk to her. By the time that eleven other people had filtered into the room, she had given up and simply sat with her eyes closed and her back against the wall.

Several minutes into what should have been seminar time, Professor Hatake pushed through the door with a small pile of papers. His eyes crinkled at the corners when he glanced at the students sitting patiently at their desks. Watching his lecturer fumble around with a USB, Sasuke wondered whether or not he was lucky that he had this particular professor as his seminar tutor.

Professor Hatake finally stood in front of the horseshoe and glanced at the clock which read that it was now ten minutes into the seminar.

"Not too shabby," he said, amusedly. "As I come around and give you a sheet of paper, I want you to tell me your name and I'll try and remember it. If I forget it anyway, don't take it personally."

He walked around, passing each student a sheet of paper with key information about Pride and Prejudice written on it. Sasuke scratched the back of his head and decided that landing Professor Hatake as his tutor wasn't a lucky sign at all.

When he saw footsteps stop in front of his desk, Sasuke mumbled his name and took the sheet from his tutor's hand. As he chanced to glance up, he felt his heart jump in his chest as he realised that his tutor wasn't looking at him at all.

He didn't turn around. He wouldn't turn around. But he knew then and there that Professor Hatake's eyes were fixed solely on the girl sitting on the floor behind him.

* * *

A/N: Thank you to anyone who reviewed last chapter. It makes me happy that you've given detailed reviews so I know what you like and don't like. It's so much more helpful and lovely to read than 'plz update'. So thank you!

LiliesBloom07 - You wouldn't believe how much I'd love to reveal what's behind all of the sneaky stuff you picked up on. Unfortunately though, it's too soon, but I'm so excited for when I can reveal all my little twists and turns. Thank you also for being so supportive of the fact that I can't update as frequently as some others can. I know that some people update weekly, but I've also got to be realistic as to what I can do.

oyink - Actually, Sakura helping Sasuke with his studies wouldn't be too far-fetched in terms of details. I'm a second year undergraduate for literature with creative writing, so all of the books that Sasuke is reading are books that I've either read or studied, just out of convenience. I probably wouldn't be going into any massive details, but there will be some book references and such here and there. Thank you for your support too :)


	8. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

Thanks Far2addicted for being my beta!

* * *

 _From the ceiling hook,_

 _The rope dangled, back and forth._

 _The pendulum stopped._

* * *

Sasuke didn't have a clue what Dr Hatake was playing at. Ever since that one time when he had been handing out sheets, his tutor had yet to even acknowledge the fact that Sakura was sat against the wall, whining and muttering about how Sasuke was just ignoring her. In her words, he was a 'Meany McMeanface'.

However, even though Dr Hatake made no sign of even noticing Sakura, he definitely made a point of giving Sasuke a knowing look every now and again. If anything, it was disconcerting to look up from your worksheet to discover that your lecturer and tutor was staring at you like they'd just discovered the eighth wonder of the world.

Sasuke spent the whole seminar tuning out the throbbing ache in his jaw that he was pretty sure was a result of gritting his teeth. When the hour was up, he was the first to stand up and grab his bag. He was actually aiming to be the first one out of the door when he heard Dr Hatake's lazy drawl.

"Sasuke Uchiha. A word, if you please."

Sasuke's shoulders had never felt so tense. He could practically feel Sakura's energy as she hovered behind him, watching him suffer. He turned around and walked toward Dr Hatake's desk. His tutor stared at him with a bored expression until every other student had left the room and there was nobody left other than the two of them and Sakura.

Dr Hatake sighed and reached across for a stack of papers on a nearby table. "You were so quick to leave there that you almost forgot to pick up a worksheet for next seminar." He said, sliding off a sheet from the top of the pile and holding it out to Sasuke. "We will be looking at sonnets, so make sure you read through them all and come up with a critical response to each of them before the lesson."

Sasuke glanced over the sheet before looking back at Dr Hatake. "Is that all?"

"More or less."

He shifted his bag on his shoulders and began walking toward the door, Sakura trailing after him like a baby duck following its mother.

"Oh, Sasuke?"

He turned his torso to look back at his tutor, and found that the man's eyes were crinkled at the corners. "What is it?"

"A word of advice from a bird of the same feather," he said. "Don't ignore your shadow."

Sasuke just stared at him; however the other man's eyes were focused on the girl behind him, who gave him a toothy grin.

* * *

Ino stared blankly at the textbook. Until recently, she'd had a hold on everything and she was just starting to believe that she'd convinced herself into becoming New Ino. The pen in her hand felt heavy as a brick, or maybe her hand was just boneless. The words blurred into a jumbled inky mess on the page. She looked down at her paper pad to discover that in her daydreaming, she had been subconsciously doodling a cartoon frog sitting on a lily pad.

"Hey."

Shikamaru slowly slid into the seat opposite hers and plonked his books down on the table. He was wearing, she noticed, jeans and a bottle green flannel shirt. The colour looked good on him, although she would never admit that to his face. Her eyes raked over the books he had been carrying.

"Physics? Of course."

"Che. It's better than Medicine."

She frowned. "Medicine?"

He gave her a half-smile and Ino felt a strange, fuzzy, slightly uncomfortable feeling in her stomach. _I probably shouldn't have drunk all of that coffee,_ she thought. _It's doing weird things to my system._

"My parents wanted me to do Medicine," he said, rolling his eyes. "Something about my IQ, apparently. But I'd rather do Physics."

She raised an eyebrow. "What's wrong with Medicine? You know, there are thousands of people who would love to be able to do Medicine. Plus isn't the head of Medicine at Konoha Uni that famous Dr Tsunade Senju? The one who appeared for an interview on the news last week because of her super-awesome groundbreaking research? You have the brains and the opportunity, but you turned it down because..?"

He shook his head and grimaced. "Because all that blood isn't really my thing. And Tsunade Senju is probably an alcoholic in real life."

Ino snorted. If her mother was there, she would chide her for being unladylike. But her mother wasn't there, and Ino was beyond caring. "An alcoholic, huh?"

"Yeah," he said, lifting up the cover of the first book in his stack. "That's what fame does to you. It drives you down to the nearest bar."

Ino held back a smile and bit her lip. Shikamaru stared silently out of the study room window. All around them, a hurricane of fingers clicked on laptop keyboards.

"We might be able to help her, you know?"

The words were so quiet on his lips that Ino struggled to hear them. It took a minute for the meaning to hit her, but when it did, she looked down at the scratches and initials chiselled into the table and willed herself not to turn into an emotional wreck. _He wants to talk about that,_ she thought, _but I'm not sure I can deal with it. I can't go down that road again._

"Shikama─"

"Ino," he said quietly, looking her in the eye. "From the sounds of it, she's driving Sasuke mad because she's stuck in that house, unable to move on. I never thought I'd end up believing in ghosts, but all this, the way that his description of her made you react, how his stuff has been tampered with because of her, it's all too much of a coincidence."

"I don't think I can─"

"Ino listen to me."

She looked at him, noticing for the first time that one of his brown eyes had a fleck of green in the iris.

"For whatever reason," he continued, "she's stuck there. Sasuke can talk to her and all, but we're not sure how much he can figure out. Since she's still lingering in the house, chances are she doesn't know why she can't move on either. It would make Sasuke's life easier if you could explain what you know about her death so that we can help her."

Ino felt her nails cut into her palms. "And why do you care so much about helping her?"

"Because Sasuke is our new friend, and he's bothered by this. Plus she'll be happier if she can finally go where she's meant to go. " He sighed. "And clearly you can't move on either."

"Who the hell do you think─"

"Ino, you'll have closure."

She felt something well up in her eyes until the world around her blurred. _Closure_. It was a nice thought. It felt good on her ears to hear him say it. There would be no Old Ino or New Ino. She would just be Ino. And she would live her life without having to carry the burden of the newspaper articles about the haunted house across town. She could go out and drink and study and leave the past behind where it belonged. And more importantly, Sakura would be free.

 _Closure._

A rustle of paper told her that Shikamaru had decided to start studying. She was no idiot. It was obvious what he was doing. He wanted to plant the seed now and wait until she'd made up her mind. _That stupid pineapple,_ she thought. _He always know_ _s_ _what buttons to push, doesn't he?_

When Ino looked back down at her textbook, she found that the words on the page actually made sense.

* * *

That evening, Sasuke came home to discover that his parents had already eaten. His mother gave him a sheepish smile and perched on the edge of a chair as she watched Itachi and him eat dinner, laughing occasionally about something their father said and asking Sasuke about his day.

"I'm sorry Sasuke, Itachi," Mikoto said with a sigh. "We were so hungry and you've both been coming home so late recently."

Sasuke spoke through a mouthful of potato. "It's okay."

"It's not okay, Sasuke. We should have waited and then eaten as a family."

"It's okay, really."

His mother had always managed to diffuse the tension somehow. Always managed to make things feel complete. But beneath her laughter and the sounds of cutlery clacking against the plates, he could feel the hum of something akin to an electric fence.

Without needing to look up or ask, Sasuke knew that his brother was preoccupied by something. Every once in a while Itachi would push his vegetables around his plate as if he couldn't bring himself to eat them. When he pressed two long, thin fingers to his temple, Sasuke decided to bear the shock and break the fence.

"Itachi, what are you doing?"

His brother didn't look up. He continued to stare at the table top in contemplation. "I'm eating, Sasuke. I thought it would be obvious."

"No, you're acting differently."

His mother chewed on the inside of her lip as she watched her two sons. "Sasuke, let him be. He's probably worried about work."

"He's always worried about work, but he doesn't act weird because of it. This is different. He's even managed to get food on his clothes."

Itachi sighed and prodded his meat with his fork. Sure enough, the crusty stains of dried food stood out prominently on his clothes. "I'm just tired, Sasuke. I'm not too hungry either."

Mikoto touched his arm. "Sasuke, please don't bother him so much. He's under a lot of stress."

Sasuke looked at his mother and then back at Itachi. He relaxed slightly in his chair, although his eyes still shone with suspicion. "Fine, then," he muttered and began cutting into a carrot. When he plopped it into his mouth, he frowned a little at the taste.

"Mother, don't take this personally, but your food tastes different."

Itachi's head finally lifted as he stared wide eyed at his younger brother, but Sasuke barely registered the movement.

"Ever since we got here your cooking has changed," he added.

Mikoto laughed it off with a wave of her hand. "I'm sorry Sasuke. It might taste strange because I'm not used to the kitchen very much. I haven't gotten used to where everything is kept, since it's all so new. And I had to throw out my favourite pan too." She pretended to pout.

"The pan doesn't affect the food that much," he said.

"The pan is _everything_ , Sasuke," she said with a grin. "Now stop being a baby brat and eat up."

Sasuke smiled at her and shovelled more food into his mouth. But his smile crumbled when Itachi stood. His brother tipped the remainder of his food into the bin, placed the dish carefully in the sink and then left the kitchen without so much as glancing back.

* * *

Shikamaru wanted to fall asleep on his laptop keyboard. But then again, it wouldn't make a very comfortable pillow. Although the glare of the screen was enough to keep him awake for millenniums. And the Physics work he was doing wasn't helping either. As interesting as it was, even he reached a point where he couldn't bear to look at another equation again. But he had a deadline.

 _Urgh, this is way too much trouble. I should have taken a gap year._

Outside of his window, a group of girls laughed and shrieked as they stumbled toward the city centre in heels and dresses that couldn't really be considered clothing.

He stretched his arms out in front before swigging the last of his coffee. With only half of his brain awake, he opened up a new tab. He sat in thought for a minute, fingers poised over the keyboard, until he typed out the jumbled up selection of words that were clinging to the back of his mind.

 _'Sakura, Konoha, dead, teenager'_

The search engine took a minute to process the information, but when the results page loaded, Shikamaru scrolled through the list of newspaper articles and frowned deeply.

"This," he mumbled.

 _It's not a surprise. We know that she's dead, but still. It's no wonder that Ino didn't want to bring it up._

* * *

The mattress creaked as Sasuke threw himself onto his bed. He pulled off his sweater, revealing the t-shirt underneath, and lay down on his back. He placed his arm over his eyes, as if he was blocking out light from the fitting overhead, except that the room was dark. It hadn't even occurred to him to turn on the lights. He lifted his arm, and smacked his head on the headboard when he jumped in fright. Sprawled out on the other side of the bed, Sakura watched him with a wry smile on her lips. It took a moment for him to recognise her, but when he did, he placed a hand over his heart and felt its rhythm pulsing beneath his skin.

"What are you doing back?" he asked, glaring at her.

She scowled. "You're being a Meany McMeanface again."

He resisted the urge to push her off the edge. "I'm not being a…Meany McMeanface," he pushed out the last words as if they pained him to say them. "You can't keep springing up on me like this. It's getting stupid."

She rolled her eyes as Sasuke inched his way down again until he was lying on the mattress beside her, staring at the ceiling. "Learn to deal with it then," she said, "because I get bored sometimes. You forget that I don't get to talk to people."

"Dr Hatake noticed you though."

She rolled onto her side so that she was facing him. "Yeah, he did. But I doubt that he would be much as far as conversation goes. Imagine. If it got out that he was talking to thin air then they'd have him sent to the nearest psychiatric hospital."

"I suppose…" Sasuke said quietly.

The two of them lay there in silence. A car passed on the road outside and the headlights burned into the room with a bright white glow. He could feel her weight on the bed. If he reached out, his fingers would touch skin. But her body seemed to be nothing but air and solid all at once. It was like she existed, but didn't exist. Something between life and death.

 _What do you expect_ , a voice in his head sneered, _she's a ghost._

He didn't look at her when he spoke. "Why do you wear those pyjamas?"

"Ino-pig bought them for me as a birthday present one year, so I like wearing them."

"And how did you manage to make the notebook disappear when my brother came in that time?"

She gave him a small smile. "I pretty much control the house, Sasuke. I can make your lights turn on and off again. I can draw your curtains at night without even touching them. I discovered that much after I woke up here. It takes energy though, like I mentioned earlier."

"Oh. I forgot about the energy and all that."

Somehow they had dropped into silence again. Sasuke was about to close his eyes, when he felt something cold tickle along the skin of his arm. He turned his head to look at her, and found that she was staring at his arm with an expression that was somewhere between sadness and understanding. Her fingers ran along the bumps and lines in his skin, as if she was tracing a map.

"You know," she whispered, "when you first moved in here, I thought to myself that you looked like a ragdoll." Her fingernail ran over a flat white scar in his skin. "And I thought you were beautiful because you looked like me."

He looked at her, unsure. "Sakura, I'm not─"

"It was the first time that someone like me had moved into the house," she continued, "and I wanted to talk to you so badly. I did try speaking to you at that time when I showed you the notebook, but at the same time I was so afraid that you would run away. You probably didn't hear me because of that."

"I did hear something. But it wasn't clear. It was like a distant call. I'm guessing that it was you?"

"Yeah. That was me."

"And when I felt spiders crawling all over me?"

Her lips twitched into a ghost of a smile. "I'm pretty sure that's just paranoia, Sasuke."

"It didn't feel like paranoia."

"Think about it. Why would I creep you out like that when I wanted you to stay and talk to me?"

"Hn."

She sighed and snuggled further into the bed sheets, still clutching his arm like it was her favourite toy. Normally, if someone dared to touch the scars on his skin, he would have pulled away. Except that he didn't feel the same urge to shrink back away from her touch like he did with others. It was different. The tingle of her fingers on his arm felt like a dribble of cold rainwater.

"You did this to yourself?" she asked, her voice barely even a whisper.

He nodded.

"Why?"

"…The doctors say that I'm depressed."

"Oh."

She didn't ask anything further. Instead, she just continued to play with his skin. He shivered under her touch, but found himself craving it. The feeling that fizzed inside him was similar to that when he was a child and his mother stroked his hair. Unlike Karin though, Sakura's fingers were soothing.

"Weren't you the same?" he asked. "You said that I was just like you, so you're the same, right?"

She turned her arm over so that he could see. Although it was dark in his room, the scars were white in the moonlight. His eyes scanned over them, looking at the direction. They were all horizontal. Nothing vertical. Nothing that was fatal enough to send her straight to the morgue.

"How did you die?"

She pressed her lips together.

"How did you die, Sakura?"

Her eyes flickered to something over his shoulder, and he tilted his head back, following the direction of her gaze. Reflected in the window behind him, a noose swayed in the breeze of an open window.

* * *

A/N: I just wanted to say thank you for the reviews and the support that my last chapter got. I hope you enjoyed this one though, considering that some interesting info came out of it. I intended to explain some of the things brought up earlier in the fic, like some of the things that Sakura said back in that tiny snippet I gave of her perspective (like the scars and the rag doll thing). I just had to get them on a conversational basis first. Plus I had to get Ino on the Let's-Save-Sakura bandwagon before I can develop the plot more.

I'm trying to improve on my writing as I'm going along so that I can figure out my own style. That being said, I looked back at some of the earlier chapters and I'm sorry if I've phrased things awkwardly in places. Most of my editing time goes on the writing I do for class, so I don't usually go back and edit loads like I would for my other projects.

Sorry, I'm rambling at this point. Thanks for reading though!


	9. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Once again, thanks to Far2addicted for her editing.

* * *

 _Spirit splashes on  
_

 _broken fingers. Demons hide_

 _deep in the marrow._

* * *

 **OI Bastard! Shika says we're gonna meet about your ghosty ghosty stalker girlfriend today. He got Ino on board too. Come to Ino's room at about 1-ish. Oh yeah, he says can you bring Casper with you as well.**

Sasuke stared at the phone in his hand as Sakura peered over his shoulder. It was a strange sensation. He could feel her presence, but he couldn't feel her breath.

"Casper is a boy," she said. Her voice was toneless. Dead.

"Hn. Sorry about Naruto."

"And I'm not a stalker either." He could feel her glaring at the phone even without looking at her. When he didn't respond, she added, "I'm not, am I?"

Sasuke shook his head and put his phone back into his jacket pocket. The two of them stood at the sinks in an old, mostly unused block of men's toilets. The tile floor was cracked in places, revealing the mould and dust underneath. The mirrors had a plastic film coating that was peeling in places. Two of the five toilets were out of order, and there was only one urinal. It was a place where no student would dream of venturing. Not when there was a modern, newly constructed set of toilets on the floor below. Using the silence to have a full conversation with Sakura would be too risky considering that tiles echo, but they could talk a little. A little was better than nothing.

Naruto's message lingered in his head longer than it should have. _He called her my girlfriend_ , he thought. He didn't know what to make of the word. It just didn't sit right, presumably because he barely knew Sakura. He only knew what she had told him.

 _You know she hung herself._

He sighed and looked at Sakura, who leaned against a sink with a pensive expression on her face. "It's half past twelve. If we're going to get to Ino's place by one, we have to set off soon. The buses are always packed."

Sakura began to nibble at her fingernail. "Ino will be there," she murmured.

"Well, yeah. It's her place. Naruto's an idiot but I don't think he'd make us break into someone's home to talk to spirits."

"It's just… I haven't seen her in a long time."

Sasuke readjusted his bag on his shoulders. "It'll be fine. You know she won't be able to see you anyway." He started walking toward the door where the sounds of shuffles, squeaks and feet from the corridor became louder.

She pulled her finger away from her mouth and followed him to the door. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

He didn't answer. He couldn't. She was going to see her friend for the first time in a long time, her friend who screamed when she first found out that Sasuke was being haunted. It was going to be emotional, and there was nothing he could say to make her feel less nervous about that fact.

* * *

"Are y-you sure this is okay?"

Ino pushed the notes into her hand, shaking her head. "It's more than okay, Hinata. Don't worry about it. Just take them."

Ino took Hinata's fingers and placed them around the papers. She nodded to Neji, who lurked in the doorway to Ino's room, watching the exchange with his arms folded. Knowing Hinata a little better now, she could see why the girl was hesitant to take the notes. Hinata had never really made many friends before now, and so common things that friends did for each other like lending notes, were things that Hinata had never experienced before.

Hinata held on to the notes, careful not to crumple them. "I-I would've come to the lecture, b-but the dentist…"

Neji stood straighter and unfolded his arms. "I would have stayed in the lecture and taken notes for her, but the dentist's office has stairs."

Ino held up her hands. "Really, it's no problem at all."

"T-thank you Ino. Y-you're a life-saver," Hinata said, smiling gently. Ino had to admit, there was an air of elegance about the girl that she couldn't help but be envious of. If Sakura were still here, Ino was sure that _she_ would have been just as jealous too.

 _Sakura_ , she thought, glancing at the clock on her bedside table. _They will be here soon._

When she glanced back to Hinata and Neji, she found that Neji was staring at her, most likely having noticed the way she looked at the clock.

"Hinata," he said, "we should head to the library. I've booked a private room for this afternoon where you can listen to your tape recordings in peace."

Hinata flinched and nodded. She made her way back to where Neji stood, using her hands to feel her way there. "Of c-course. Again, thank you Ino."

"Anytime," Ino said, just before Neji closed the door behind them.

Once again in silence, Ino plonked herself down on the bed and picked at her electric blue nail polish as she waited. Each tick of the tiny clock on the table seemed louder than the last. She felt a strange feeling in her gut, something between a tickle and a buzz, as if she had a housefly circling the inside of her stomach. _Shikamaru will be here soon. So will Sakura. This feeling, it's just nerves. You haven't seen her in a long time._

Ten minutes later, a knock at the door made her jump out of her stupor. She stood and touched the doorknob one, two, three times before she finally opened the door. In the entrance, Shikamaru leaned against the doorframe just as Neji had done minutes before. He was shadowed by Naruto and Sasuke. Ino stared at the space just over Sasuke's left shoulder, where she imagined that Sakura might be. She took a deep breath.

 _It's time._

* * *

Behind him, Sasuke felt Sakura stiffen. And he couldn't blame her. He'd seen for himself the way that Ino's eyes had settled between Shikamaru, Naruto and then him. But then she'd looked right over his shoulder, exactly where Sakura was standing at that moment.

"Can she see me?" Sakura whispered.

Sasuke didn't answer. He didn't need to because the answer was written all over Ino's face. The second after Ino's eyes landed on Sakura, Ino's expression twisted into something unreadable. And then he noticed the way that she also looked behind Naruto and Shikamaru. He could only presume that she was trying to fill in the blanks. She was trying to imagine what the picture would look like if it was complete.

And he knew that Sakura had seen this too, if it was any indication by the way she remained in the hall when he followed Naruto and Shikamaru into the cramped space of Ino's room. He looked over his shoulder at Sakura, waiting for her to step in too. He felt the eyes of his friends watching him.

"Come on," he said simply.

At this, Sakura stirred and stepped quietly into the room where she made her way into the corner next to the door and crouched down, resting her head on her knees.

Sasuke took a seat on the floor, close enough to be a part of the discussion, but also close enough to listen to what Sakura had to say. He turned to look at Ino, who was sitting on her bed and staring right at him. "She's nervous about seeing you," he told her.

He saw something akin to worry flash across Ino's face, before Ino spoke. "Sakura," she said, her voice strained, "I'm here for you now. I wasn't before. But I am now."

Something at the bottom of Sasuke's heart tickled when he turned back to Sakura. He watched as a tear rolled down the side of her cheek and dripped off her jaw. Her lips were pressed together and she had her eyes trained to the carpet. She gave a small nod.

When he looked at Ino again, he saw the question in her eyes. "She heard you," he said, "and she says thank you."

Shikamaru, who was sitting on Ino's floor with his back against her radiator, eyed Sasuke curiously. "Is she willing to answer any questions, bearing in mind that it would help us figure out why she's stuck here?"

Again, Sakura nodded.

Sasuke watched as she chewed on the skin of her bottom lip. "She'll answer questions," he said.

Naruto, who had plonked himself down, legs crossed, at the foot of Ino's bed, scratched at his scalp and glanced between Sasuke and the corner that must've looked empty to him. "Hey, Sasuke, she is actually there, right? You're not just going crazy and making us do some weird Ouija shit, right?"

Ino played with the nail polish on her fingers and frowned at him.

Sasuke sighed and turned to the corner again. "Tell me something that only you and Ino would know."

He saw Sakura's chest move as she held in a laugh. But the look on her face was bittersweet. From where he was standing, he couldn't help but see the scars on her skin which reminded him once more of the information she had told him the previous night.

Sakura glanced up at him. "Just tell her that she can try, but no amount of makeup will cover up her pig face."

Sasuke's mouth gaped. His head sank back as he groaned. _Of all the things to say…_

"Well?" Ino said, leaning forward.

He huffed and stared at his hands, wondering whether he should hold them up in defence. "She said that…erm…that you can try but no amount of makeup will cover up your pig face."

He spared a glance at Ino, but she didn't claw at him like he had half expected her to. She sniffed and nodded, even smiled a little despite how her eyes glassed over. So that was that. They had Ino's confirmation that no, he wasn't crazy and roping them into 'Ouija shit', as Naruto so eloquently put it, just for laughs.

Scratching his leg, Naruto said "Can you ask her why she's dead then?"

Sasuke sat up from his slouch ready to speak on Sakura's behalf, ready to talk about what she had revealed to him only hours ago. He knew that Ino also most likely knew how her best friend had died, but it wasn't likely that she would want to be the only one to openly discuss it. Only when he opened his mouth to speak, he was surprised to find that Shikamaru had perked up just as quickly, looking just as taken aback as Sasuke.

"What is it?" Ino asked, looking between them. "Do you both know something? I thought I'd be the only one other than Sakura herself."

Shikamaru tentatively reached into his pocket, removing a packet of cigarettes before pulling out a folded up sheet of paper. He reached across and handed it to Sasuke, who took it and held it delicately between his fingers.

"This is probably what you were going to say, right?"

Sasuke knew what it would be. He liked to watch Columbo on Sunday afternoons with his mother, and he'd certainly watched enough to take an educated guess.

He unfolded the sheet of paper and scanned his eyes over the large headline and the black and white printed image of his current home, except in the picture his house was blooming with rose bushes on the front lawn and if he squinted, he could see the outline of a spring wreath on the front door. He figured that the roses must've died after Sakura's family moved out, and they probably took the wreath with them. He skimmed through the first few paragraphs.

 **'Body of Suicidal Teen Found by Parents in Home**

 _As a parent, the idea of coming home to find your house quiet and your children gone is unthinkable. However, on the 3_ _rd_ _July, Kizashi (59) and Mebuki Haruno (54) returned home in the evening to discover the body of their teenage daughter Sakura Haruno (17). Although police earlier refused to discuss the circumstances of Sakura's death, it was later revealed to be a suicide._

 _At the mere age of seventeen and having only just applied to Konoha University to study Medicine, Sakura Haruno was undoubtedly a promising young woman with a bright future ahead of her. According to police reports, Sakura had been discussing these very plans with her friend and classmate Ino Yamanaka (17) that very morning. Only hours later, Sakura was found to have hung herself from the ceiling of her bedroom, leaving a note on her desk that read 'you killed me'._

 _Whilst police undertook investigations into the unclear meaning of the note, due to the lack of leads or evidence, no conclusions can be made as of yet regarding who or what the note was referring to. Local psychologist Dr Shisui Uchiha who has been aiding Mr and Mrs Haruno through their trauma shared his opinion on the matter: "Like many victims of suicide, it was likely that Sakura was in a state of emotional turmoil, which resulted in her leaving such a provocative message. As for any deeper meanings, it's doubtable."_

 _We asked Parents Kizashi and Mebuki about how the family is coping with the loss. Kizashi Haruno responded "Sakura was our only child, and we would have done anything for her happiness." At his side, his wife bravely held back her tears. "To think that all this time she must've been suffering," he continues, "we can't put into words how heartbreaking it is to know this. It was our responsibility to be there for her, but she was always so bright. We had no idea. I failed her. I failed my daughter."'_

Sasuke grimaced and pulled the article away from his eyes. Even if he didn't know Sakura until recently, even _he_ felt like he had failed her somewhat. He could feel Shikamaru staring at him and waiting for confirmation that yes, Sakura indeed hung herself in her bedroom leaving a vague note that nobody could figure out instead of the standard goodbye.

 _Shisui never said anything to us about the house_ , Sasuke thought. _He should have at least mentioned that his clients' daughter died in my bedroom._

"Yeah," he croaked out at last. "That's what she told me…or showed me."

Naruto cocked his head. "Showed you? You mean like visions? You can't just go eating any mushrooms you find lying around, ya know?"

Sasuke hissed through his teeth. "She can make me see visions and weird stuff when she wants to," he said, "but that doesn't matter." He turned around to face Sakura, who in turn was watching him. Her eyes peered from over her forearms which rested on her bony kneecaps. "You remember how you died," he said, "but why did you do it?"

She shook her head and shrugged. "I don't know. I can't remember anything leading up to my death. I remember putting a noose around my neck, but I have no idea why I did it."

"Did she say something?" Ino whispered softly.

Sasuke relayed Sakura's answer to the group. Shikamaru just nodded as he came to the same conclusion as Sasuke did: in order for Sakura to move on, she has to figure out what caused her to end her own life. Naruto's head dropped a little and something heavy with emotion stirred in his eyes. That wasn't unexpected; Naruto, as bright and sunny as he was, had always been sensitive to the suffering of others. On the other hand, Ino gasped and rubbed the palm of her hand over her eyes. From behind his back, Sasuke heard Sakura stir.

"Ino?" she said, as she stood and perched on the edge of the bed next to her best friend. "God Ino-Pig, you've grown up so much and it's only been a year," she added under her breath.

The three boys were silent as they watched their friend. Ino's forehead was crumpled up under her palm and the fingers of her other hand shook as she cried. "It's my fault," she whispered through a blocked nose and salty tears. "It's my fault."

"It's not your fault," Sakura said, even though the girl couldn't hear her.

Ino sniffled and blinked repeatedly. "I was the one who taught her how to tie a noose. We were at my house and we were talking about Halloween, even though it was ages away,because it was our favourite holiday. I was thinking of organising a party at my house and inviting everyone we knew. Sakura wouldn't have been able to come because her parents were always really weird about these things, but whenever I had parties in the past, I always let Sakura help me plan everything. Anyway we were coming up with ideas to decorate the house, and at the time I thought it would be _fun_ " the word fell from her tongue with distain "to make voodoo dolls out of old t-shirts and hang them up around the house with tiny nooses. Sakura asked me whether or not I even knew how to tie a noose, and because I'd done similar things for Halloween before and because I'm an idiot, I showed her how to tie one." Ino paused. "That was in June, one month before she died."

The group said nothing. Sasuke swallowed and looked back at Sakura, who was chewing on her lip with guilt. She glanced at Ino before she glanced at him.

"Can you tell her that I would have watched a tutorial on the internet anyway, so she didn't really do anything wrong? Oh, can you also tell her that I was really looking forward to making the voodoo dolls even if my parents would have crapped themselves at the thought?"

Sasuke passed on the message, and something in Ino's expression lifted. But Sakura wasn't done.

"Sasuke," she said, "can you now tell Ino to stay still for a minute and not freak her sensitive pig-brain out."

"I'm not telling her that," he replied before turning to Ino. "Try to stay still for a minute."

Ino's eyebrows drew together. "Why?"

"Because Sakura wants you to. She didn't say why." When Sasuke's eyes slid to the empty space on the bed, Ino followed his gaze.

Slowly, Sakura's pale hand inched across the duvet toward Ino's. Sakura frowned in concentration just as her fingertips touched the edge of Ino's palm. Ino flinched. Her eyes were wide as she stared in amazement at her hand. Her breaths came out in choked gasps, but to Sasuke's surprise, she managed to stay still. Sakura's hand slipped into her best friend's for a few seconds. Just long enough to squeeze it comfortingly.

Sasuke couldn't help but stare. Compared to Ino's soft looking hand with violet painted fingernails, Sakura's fingers were grey and he could see the blue veins running just under the skin, as if she'd spent too much time outside on a frosty winter's day.

Sakura then removed her hand from Ino's, frowning a little in tiredness. But her actions appeared to have the desired effect. Once Ino had gotten over the feeling of cold, invisible skin touching hers – Sasuke could empathise – she was staring at her hand with a grin.

"Sakura!" she squealed through tears. "Sakura you're really here!"

Something jolted through Sasuke's chest at the sight of Sakura's expression. The girl was smiling, despite the tax on her energy levels. But it wasn't the smile that she had given him. It was an entirely different smile. The kind of smile that makes you want to laugh and cry and drown all at the same time. Sitting there cross-legged on the floor of Ino's room, it would have been a sentimental moment if it wasn't interrupted by the sound of Shikamaru clearing his throat.

The group looked at each other, knowing that they had gotten off topic. Between the serious looks he gave to the other three, Sasuke stole glances at Sakura. She was sitting on the bed, leaning with her back against the wall. It was a strange feeling knowing that he was the only one in the room who could see her.

Sakura's eyes met his, and Sasuke blinked before looking back to the group, playing it off as a passing glimpse.

"Ino," Shikamaru said, "do you have a piece of paper or a notebook?"

She made a gesture with her hand. "In the top drawer over there."

Shikamaru scooted over to the small chest of drawers against the wall and fished around in the top drawer until he pulled out a small red notebook with cartoon cats all over the cover. He raised an eyebrow at Ino, but she just waved it off.

"It was reduced," she said. "I'm a student. I'm poor so I can't help it."

Although it wasn't said aloud, it was clear that by squeezing Ino's hand in forgiveness, the dreary mood in the room had already lifted, particularly where Ino was concerned.

Shikamaru took hold of a pen that was rolling around on Ino's floor and drew a series of bullet points down the first empty page of the notebook.

"Okay," he said. "What do we know already?"

"She's dead," Naruto piped up.

The other three, including Sakura, glared at him until he shrivelled up into himself.

"I mean…eh…erm…she topped herself but doesn't remember why?"

Shikamaru wrote it down slowly. "That's just the start. What else do we know?"

Ino cleared her throat. "This probably isn't very helpful, but Sakura's parents were always a bit strange," she said before adding, "sorry, Sakura, but it's true."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Naruto asked.

Sasuke gave Sakura a confused look, and she shrugged in response. "My parents are…I don't suppose you could call them delusional, but they're kind of delusional. It's difficult to explain. They kind of have strange beliefs about things, about people. I remember they would just point to people who they see on TV - you know people who aren't perfect, maybe they drink too much or they're addicted to drugs or have sex before marriage – and they would say that a demon had taken hold of them or something. It was really weird."

Sasuke just frowned deeply, trying to get his head around the topic, but he just didn't quite understand.

"That's why I didn't go to Ino-Pig's parties," Sakura explained. "It was too risky what with the kind of stuff that goes on at house parties. I know you're confused, but I always was too. It mainly used to just be my mum who had all these delusions, because some mental problems running in the family – my grandma was the same apparently – but then my dad started agreeing with her. I've never quite been sure why he started though." She paused. "I can't blame my mum. She can't help having delusions. It's just bad genetics, and she wouldn't go see the doctor for it either."

"Do you…do you think that they might have had something to do with it?" Sasuke asked, not wanting to upset her by giving the impression that her parents were already listed down as suspects.

Sakura shook her head. "I doubt it. I remember being a model human in their eyes. Plus, just because they had some issues going on it doesn't necessarily mean that they would murder someone. This isn't Hollywood, Sasuke. You know most people with psychological issues don't actually hurt other people."

"Hn," he grunted, adding "I'm sorry" before he carefully relayed the information to the group, making sure not to phrase things in such a way that it painted her parents in a bad light, and therefore inadvertently making them look suspicious.

Shikamaru gave a strange shake of his head and jotted down everything that Sasuke had just told them. He clicked the pen against his thumb nail, causing the pen to leave dots and little lines where the tip of the pen had dragged against the paper. "We're forgetting something," he said at last. When the others just simply stared at him, he sighed. "The strange note that Sakura left behind. The one that said 'you killed me'."

Sasuke's eyes widened a little in remembrance. Ino frowned, as if she knew too much about the subject. Naruto just made a strange noise that lingered somewhere between a squeal and a meow.

"You guys didn't even let me read the stuff on that piece of paper! I didn't know anything about a note. You're all leaving me out of the loop, ya know!"

Sakura turned to Sasuke, who was blatantly ignoring Naruto's outcry. "Just to let you know, I don't remember why I wrote that note either, or who it was aimed at," she said to him.

Sasuke nodded. "She says she doesn't remember why she wrote it," he drawled to the rest of the room, which quieted Naruto down. "She has no idea who it was for either."

Shikamaru added it to the list he had made before pushing the notebook until it skidded across the floor and sat in the centre of the room. Everyone stared at the small list with only three bullet points: _doesn't remember reason for suicide, family history of psychological issues, note that accused someone of killing her but no memory of why or who._

* * *

Naruto huddled in his Jacket as Shikamaru lit his cigarette with his body faced into the building and away from the wind. He eyed the red and white no-smoking sign next to Shikamaru's head. Even though Naruto was used to the worst that nature had to offer, even he could admit that it was freezing.

"Hey, Shikamaru?"

There was a series of clicks as Shikamaru flicked at his lighter for what felt like the hundredth time. "Yeah?" Shikamaru drawled.

"Why are you even doing this thing with Sasuke's ghost girlfriend? I mean, Sasuke's my friend, so I know why I'm doing it. But I don't get why you're even interested."

Shikamaru took a few seconds before he answered. "Part of it is because I'm curious, and why shouldn't I be? I didn't even know that ghosts existed until Sasuke told us about Sakura. And the other part of it, I suppose you could say that it's for Ino. It was obvious that she never moved on, and she'll probably want closure. Besides, if we didn't help Ino, she would be an emotional wreck all time. It would be so troublesome for the rest of us."

Naruto nodded just as Shikamaru managed to hold the flame long enough to light his cigarette. Looking at Shikamaru then, he couldn't help but feel that his reasons were similar. Help out Sasuke, but also satisfy his own curiosity. But he knew from the number of times that Jiraiya had been punched in the nose for ogling, that curiosity wasn't always a good thing.

* * *

Ino tightened her fingers around the handle of her window, as she listened to the conversation below. But it was hard to hear over the thud of her heart.

 _Don't they know that they're standing right under my room?_

When their voices ceased, Ino slowly pulled the window down and clicked the lock into place. She collapsed onto her bed and blushed deeply as she recounted what she had just heard.

* * *

A/N: I would have finished this sooner if not for the sheer amount of assignment deadlines I have had. Plus, I just started writing a novel, but finding time to write when you feel the inescapable pressure of assignments weighing you down. If you do anything other than work, you jsut feel guilty. Blah. I hate it.

Oh, and to the people who want to know what Itachi's deal is, Itachi will be part of a sub-plot. Hehehe but you won't be finding out about him for a while yet. Hehehe. Everything will fall into place.

Poladots - I hadn't actually watched any kdrama until you mentioned Oh My Ghostess, because I looked into it after I read your review and I just finished watching it around a week ago. I can definitely see the similarities between this and that, even if Sakura wasn't murdered per se. It's more of a 'what killed' rather than a 'who killed'. Thank you for introducing me to kdrama though! I loved Oh My Ghostess so much, and it made me cry so much in places, especially when Shin Soon-ae said goodbye to her family and saved her dad before she moved on. I was dead inside.

Chidosen - I'm sorry you hate Hinata so much. Unfortunately, her personality won't exactly do a massive change because I'm trying to keep her in character. As for her role in the fic, her and Neji have some issues to sort out. Kind of like a mini sub-plot.

Anyway, thanks for reading the chapter! I love hearing all your responses. There's something so interactive about writing fanfiction.


	10. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

Thank you Far2addicted for beta-reading

* * *

Drops stained by lipstick

fingerprints. Water gurgles

acid, fire and blood.

* * *

The sun had already set by the time Sasuke kicked his front door to a close behind him. Ever since the group had met in Ino's room, Sakura had followed him silently. Her expression was blank, and she'd sometimes chewed her lip in thought, most likely trying to remember the events preceding her death. From the look on her face, she wasn't having too much success.

"Sasuke?"

He turned when he heard Itachi's voice call his name from the direction of the living room. Upon entering the living room, Sasuke was greeted with the sight of Itachi crouched beside the veneer coffee table, pouring green tea from a cast iron teapot into two little china cups that had been taken from their mother's favourite tea set.

"Tea, Sasuke?" Itachi asked.

Sasuke would have pointed out that his brother had already poured a cup for him, but he was too tired for conflict. "You forgot to pour some for mum and dad," he mumbled, slumping into the couch cushions. He lazily noted that Sakura had perched herself beside him on the arm of the couch.

Itachi hesitated before slowly shaking his head. "No, I made this tea for the two of us."

"Selfish much?" Sasuke teased, but Itachi only sent him a look that was a mixture of hurt and wariness.

"Sasuke, please don't be difficult," he said as he took his own teacup and sat down. "I just want to sit and talk with my brother." He sighed and nursed the teacup between his hands. "Is there anything wrong with that?"

Sasuke rolled his eyes and got to his feet. He took one step out of the living room, only he was stopped by a hand on his arm. His brother's hand. In spite of Itachi's thin frame, the man was certainly stronger than he looked. Without even trying, Sasuke knew that if he tried to pull his arm free, just like Lennie from Steinbeck's _Of Mice and Men_ , his brother would grip harder and harder.

When Sasuke peered over his shoulder, his brother's face was close enough that he could see the premature wrinkles and the slight frown to his lips. Although Itachi's hair held no sliver of grey, Sasuke realised that a grey hair or two wouldn't look amiss on his brother's face.

"Please, Sasuke," Itachi insisted. "Please, just sit."

Sasuke glanced between Itachi and the edge of the stairs that poked out from behind the corner. Briefly, he wondered what Sakura thought of all of this. Should he choose to have a heart to heart with his brother, or go to his bedroom, where Sakura would be mooching through his books and asking him stupid questions? He breathed deeply. It was a Catch 22.

"Fine."

Itachi's hand released his arm, and the two of them sat back down. There was a quiet moment where Itachi simply stared at his hands in front of him. Sasuke recognised the expression on his brother's face. It was like Itachi was trying to find the right words, but every time he touched the subject, it slipped away from his tongue.

"Spit it out," Sasuke said.

Itachi weaved his fingers together. "How do you feel about us getting a dog?"

Sasuke blinked. "What?"

"A dog, Sasuke." Itachi continued. "I was thinking it would be a good idea for us to get a dog."

Sasuke couldn't find a word to summarise the thoughts that ran through his mind. _That's what he wanted to talk about?_ "But…wait, why do we need a dog? What brought this on? And who would walk the thing?"

Itachi hesitated for a moment. "I was thinking that you could walk it. Just a small dog, a friendly breed that would bring some light into the house─"

"Me? But I'm away during the day. I can't walk dogs, I don't have the time."

"Sure you do," Itachi said. "You have more time than I do, and you spend all your time cooped up in this house when you're not at the university. I think it would be a good idea to give you something to look after."

Sasuke narrowed his eyes and stood. "You dragged me in here and made me sit just so you could ask me something menial like that?" He shook his head. "This is ridiculous," he added and stalked off up the stairs with Sakura nervously following.

As he shut his bedroom door closed behind him, he realised belatedly that the tea had remained untouched.

* * *

The following morning, Sakura busied herself with poking Sasuke's back as he hunched over a desk in the library, squinting at a copy of Ulysses. So far, Sasuke hadn't reacted at all, not even when she jabbed him twice as hard in the spine.

This was all okay for Sasuke, because he actually had something to do. But as for her? She had only the option of either lurking around their empty house, or sitting on the floor next to Sasuke. It wasn't like she could read a book either, because someone would see the pages moving and it would cause a scene.

"Sasukeee, What did I do to deserve this kind of treatment, eh?"" she whined, poking him again. When he didn't even flinch, she mumbled, "you treat me as bad you treat your poor brother."

Sasuke's back stiffened.

"Shut up." His voice was a sharp wisp of air, quiet but deadly. "Don't talk about things you don't understand."

Sakura crossed her arms and glared at the side of his face. "Cut it out with all the drama. You're acting like a moody teenager."

His eyes flickered in her direction, but before he could retaliate his phone vibrated on the desk. She saw his attention shift to the phone, and suddenly the thin sprig of conversation she had with him was lost. And he'd only just started responding too. Sakura sighed and leaned against one of the legs of the desk.

Just when she had come to terms with the fact that she would have to sit there for the next couple of hours while poor Sasuke trundled his way through Ulysses, he whispered something that she couldn't quite catch.

"What?" she asked him, secretly hoping that he was asking her for help so that she would actually have something to do, rather than just sit on the floor with all the orphan pen lids and the mud trailed in from outside.

"You should listen the first time," he breathed lowly. "The idiot will be coming with Ino and Shikamaru."

At his words, Sakura felt something inside of her rise like a loaf of bread. Ino would be coming. She hadn't realised how much she had missed her best friend until the recent get-together in Ino's room. Now that Ino felt more comfortable with Sakura's other-worldly existence, it was almost like the way it was before her death.

 _Almost._

"There."

Sakura snapped out of her reverie when Sasuke spoke.

"You're happy now, so let me read in peace before they get here." Sakura raised her hand to poke his spine again but he glared at her and added, "don't even think about it."

* * *

"So, you want to do what? This is confusing me, ya know."

Shikamaru sighed and gave Sasuke a lazy glance. _How the hell did Sasuke put up with this guy?_ Shikamaru asked himself.

His fingers were twitching at the thought of the cigarette packet in the inner pocket of his jacket. He would've loved to light on up right then and there, but the study room they booked out had a smoke alarm squatting on the ceiling. _This is so troublesome._

"What I'm trying to say," Shikamaru repeated, "is that we should find someone else who has the same, eh, talent for seeing things that normal people don't see. If we can find someone who has some experience with the dead and how to get them to move on, they might be able to help us."

Across the table from him, Ino played with her ponytail. "But I thought we just had to figure out what happened before she died," she said. "Like, you know, visiting key spots and talking to our old friends."

"That's true," Shikamaru replied, "but as far as I know, you're her best friend and yet even you don't know where she was or what she was doing in the hours before she died."

Ino's eyes narrowed and she turned her face away from him. He heard Naruto mutter, "that was a little harsh, ya know."

Shikamaru turned to Sasuke, who had yet to contribute to the conversation whatsoever. Sasuke appeared to be watching everything with disinterest, but Shikamaru knew from the dark glint in his eye that the cogs were turning in his brain.

"Has Sakura found anyone else who could see her?" he asked Sasuke, ignoring the feeling of the cigarette packet brushing against his ribs from inside his jacket.

Sasuke was quiet for a minute, either in thought or in listening to a voice that Shikamaru couldn't hear.

"There are people who have seen her before, but she doesn't know who they are and they didn't seem to know that she was dead…apart from the guy who ran screaming out of his new house. He figured it out quickly."

Shikamaru frowned and began to rub at his eyes with his hands in despair, but Sasuke tilted his head to the side, indicating that Sakura was most likely talking to him.

"What is it, bastard?" Naruto asked. "Does she know something?"

Sasuke's eyes widened almost imperceptibly. "My lecturer, Kakashi Hatake, he commented on the way that Sakura was following me. I saw him looking at her, and he wasn't put off by her either."

Shikamaru nodded and felt his lips curve. They were making progress, even if it was baby steps. "Which means that he has some experience with seeing the dead."

Sasuke smirked. "Sakura also wants to add that she'd rather you call her a ghost than 'the dead'. She says it makes her feel like a zombie."

Out of the corner of his eye Shikamaru saw Ino smile, in spite of the fact that she was blatantly refusing to look him in the eye.

"Erm, okay. But more importantly, we should go and ask him about ghosts," Shikamaru said, and looking at Sasuke, added, "do you know where his office is?"

Sasuke shook his head and made a move toward his backpack on the floor. "It'll have to wait for now."

"What's going on, bastard?" Naruto asked, shooting forward in his seat.

"I'm supposed to be meeting up with my brother in an hour. He ambushed me at dawn when I was still in bed."

Shikamaru had to admit to himself that he was a little disappointed. They were actually getting somewhere, only now they had to wait for Sasuke to find the time. It's not like they had the option of proceeding without him either. If the mystery behind Sakura's death was a wall waiting to be built, Sasuke was the toolbox they needed in order to piece together the bricks.

Shikamaru watched Naruto scowl and grumble, "what does he even want you for anyway? It better not be more important than this. Shouldn't he be at work anyway?"

Sasuke sighed and shook his head. "Hn. Technically it's his day off because he's only doing the teaching part time, since it's not a proper job. Just a work placement for his teaching certificate. But he went in anyway just for the morning." He closed his eyes as though he couldn't quite comprehend the thought running through his mind. "He wants us to get a dog," he muttered finally. He scooped up his bag and hauled it onto his back. "I have to set off in five minutes if I want to get to the dog sanctuary."

"Dog sanctuary?"

Shikamaru's eyes flickered over to Ino who had perked up all of a sudden. The words had come out with hesitance. Caution. As if she suspected something but couldn't bring herself to directly say it.

Sasuke looked at her. "Hn. Inuzuka dog sanctuary. It's near my house."

"Inuzuka…" Ino trailed off. "I forgot about that."

"What?" Shikamaru groaned out. The sooner they moved on the sooner he could have his cigarette. "If you know something, just say it. Stop beating around the bush."

Ino's blue eyes had never looked so icy. And they were aimed right at him. "If you see a boy with spiky brown hair, probably wearing a coat with a fluffy hood, then you've found Kiba Inuzuka."

Sasuke's eyebrow twitched. "Does he have a big white dog?"

Ino's mouth curled. "Yes, that's his dog, Akamaru. You've seen Kiba?"

"I've seen a guy with a hood and a white dog walking past my house in the dead of night."

"That's him!" Ino clapped her hands together. "Don't worry, he probably walks by because it was Sakura's house. If you're going to the sanctuary, you could take this opportunity to talk to him. He might have seen Sakura before, well…"

Shikamaru rubbed at his temple. "Hold on a minute Ino. You haven't even told us what his significance is. He's an old classmate?"

Ino shook her head, clearly pleased with herself. "Nope. I played matchmaker between the two of them. Kiba was Sakura's secret boyfriend."

"Secret?" Naruto asked.

She nodded. "Secret because her parent would never have let the relationship happen. They were always so funny about who Sakura hung out with." She paused and added, "they actually think that I'm a model student with straight A grades. No alcohol. No drugs. No cigarettes. In short, Sakura made up all sorts of lies about me so that her parents would let her come over to my house after classes."

Shikamaru peered at her through his fingers which still rested on his temple. "And you think Kiba might know something?"

She shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. It's worth a shot though."

Shikamaru nodded. Yes, it was definitely worth a shot, because now they had two directions to pursue. Sasuke's seminar leader who could see Sakura, and Kiba Inuzuka, Sakura's previous secret boyfriend who keeps walking his dog past her old house for whatever reason.

Things were definitely looking up.

* * *

As Sasuke shied away from the St Bernard puppy squatting on Itachi's knee, he decided that he was not a dog person. A thin line of saliva stretched from the puppy's jawline and pooled in the gap between two of Itachi's fingers. Nope, definitely not a dog person.

The Puppy Room that they sat in resembled a living room, and Sasuke had a sneaky suspicion that the Inuzuka family actually lived at the sanctuary rather than just simply owning it. Behind the door opposite to him, Sasuke imagined that they had a back room where the family actually lived, while certain rooms were exclusive to those who were looking to adopt. Just like how houses used to be set out before living rooms became a place for residents and guests alike.

The couch under him was padded and plumped with cushions, and at times Sasuke felt like he was being pushed onto the floor by the sheer volume of cushions and throws. The floor itself was crawling with four footed canine companions, some of which he could feel brushing around his calves.

"Why can't we go to a cat sanctuary instead?"

Itachi stilled his scratching behind the puppy's ears and sighed. "Cats are more independent than dogs. I thought it would be better to get something that we can take for walks."

Sasuke frowned just as he felt a wagging tail bat against his shin. "Why?"

"I just thought it would be a nice idea, Sasuke. Please let it go."

"But you're just skirting the question─"

"I am not skirting anything. Now please, drop it Sasuke."

There was an awkward stretch of silence between the two of them. The puppy in Itachi's hands had begun nibbling at the buttons on his suit, and behind the closed door opposite, he could hear the buzz of voices, one of which he recognised to be that of Tsume Inuzuka. The other voice was low, rougher than Tsume's. A mystery to him.

The couch cushions lifted a little as Itachi placed the puppy on the floor, where it sat dazed and confused for a second, before peering up at Itachi.

Itachi held his hand out in front of him and with the other, pulled a wrinkled up tissue from his pocket. "Perhaps a breed that does not dribble quite so much."

Sasuke grimaced as he watched Itachi dab at the shiny trickles of saliva that coated his fingers. Cats weren't dribblers. Plus, he wouldn't have to walk them. Just when Sasuke was considering pestering Itachi until he agreed to get a cat instead, something soft and small pushed its way between his ankles. He looked down, only to be greeted with a tiny ball of crème-brulee fluff. Before he could shoo the thing away, he felt a prickle on his shin as the puppy sank a paw into his jeans and began to climb his leg.

"Oh, I see you've made a friend," Itachi mused.

Sasuke shook his leg a little. "Get off," he muttered, but the fluffball's determination didn't waver. The little beady eyes, like the eyes of a teddy bear, were fixed on the silver zip of Sasuke's jacket.

"Get off," he repeated, shaking his leg once more. When he realised that the puppy's claws were truly embedded within his jeans and that the thing wasn't going anywhere, he growled. "I don't want you," he said to it. "You're bearded. You're a goat."

"He's not bearded," Itachi chuckled.

When the prickle of claws against skin became too much, Sasuke peeled the puppy away from his leg. It trembled in his hands before barking at him.

Sasuke opened his mouth to chastise the dog, but he was interrupted by the click of the door opening. Two sets of footsteps piled into the room and Sasuke looked away from the eyes of the puppy and straight into the eyes of a young man who leaned against the wall.

Sasuke's mind plunged back to an image of a man staring at him through the window of a car as it drove past, seeing the same man walking a white dog past his house, Ino's descriptions earlier that day.

"Ah, I see you've found one you're happy with. A Havanese. They're good for first time dog owners, and they're excellent watchdogs too," he heard Tsume comment, but her voice seemed unimportant and he couldn't find it in him to respond.

The young man was dressed in an oversized grey coat with a white fur hood, despite being indoors. However, the fresh mud on his boots suggested that he had just come from outside. Underneath the hood, several strings of brown hair slipped down over his forehead, almost long enough to touch the pair of sharp black eyes that were trained on Sasuke.

"You…" The word escaped from Sasuke's tongue before he could hold it back.

The young man raised an eyebrow. "Me?"

* * *

A/N: I was originally going to give Sasuke a big, scary dog. I couldn't help myself though. The thought of him with a little 'bearded' Havenese puppy was too adorable to pass up. The whole dog thing probably seems a little random in this chapter though, even if it's there for several reasons.

To those who reviewed during the really LONG period between this chapter and the last one, thank you so much for your kindness! It gives me life


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